Google "punished" for privacy violations - Fined $425 million for illegal data collection
A federal jury has ruled that Google must pay $425 million for violating user privacy by continuing to collect data on millions of users who had disabled a tracking feature in their accounts.
The verdict came after a lawsuit in federal court in San Francisco, which alleged that over an eight-year period, Google accessed users' phones to collect, store and use their data, violating privacy promises under its "Web & App Activity" feature.
Users sought more than $31 billion in damages. The jury convicted Google on two of three counts of privacy violations, but found no evidence of malicious intent.
The company has announced that it will appeal the decision, stressing that "the measure misunderstands how the products work. Privacy tools give users control over their data, while respecting the choice to disable personalization."
The users' lawyer said they were "very pleased" with the jury's verdict. The class-action lawsuit, filed in July 2020, alleged that Google continued to collect data even with the option disabled, through relationships with apps like Uber, Venmo and Instagram that use Google's analytics services.
During the process, Google argued that the data collected was “non-personal, pseudonymous, and stored in separate, secure, and encrypted locations.” According to them, it was not linked to users’ individual accounts or identities.
The court certified the case as a class action lawsuit covering about 98 million Google users and 174 million devices.
In April 2024, the tech giant agreed to destroy billions of records of private user data to settle a lawsuit that accused the company of tracking people who were using private browsing modes, including “Incognito” mode.
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