Google Ordered to Pay $425M for Breaching Users' Privacy
Google has been ordered to pay $425 million after a U.S. federal jury found it had collected data from millions of users who thought they had turned off tracking. The class action lawsuit, covering around 98 million users and 174 million devices, claimed that Google continued harvesting data from third-party apps, even when users disabled the “Web & App Activity” setting in their accounts. The plaintiffs said this violated Google's own privacy assurances, with the jury siding with them on two of three claims.
Google argued that the data was “nonpersonal” and “pseudonymous,” and was stored securely and separately from users’ identities. But the jury wasn’t convinced, though it found Google hadn’t acted with malice, which spared the company from even larger punitive damages. “This decision misunderstands how our products work,” said spokesperson Jose Castaneda, adding that “we will appeal it.”
The verdict adds to a growing list of privacy cases facing the tech giant. Earlier this year, Google paid nearly $1.4 billion in a settlement with Texas over unauthorized collection of biometric data. It also agreed to destroy billions of browsing records tied to private "Incognito" sessions. While Google maintains it respects user privacy, attorney David Boies, representing the plaintiffs, said they were “obviously very pleased with the verdict.”
