Google has been hit with a $425 million (£316 million) penalty after a federal jury in San Francisco ruled that the company invaded users’ privacy.
The jury found that Google continued to collect data from millions of people, even though they had switched off a tracking feature in their Google accounts.
This went on for eight years across popular apps like Uber, Venmo, and Instagram, all of which use Google’s analytics services.
The class-action lawsuit originally sought more than $31 billion in damages, but the jury decided Google was only responsible for two of the three privacy claims.
Jury Decision Limits the Damages
Importantly, the jury did not find that Google acted with malice. That meant the company avoided having to pay extra in punitive damages, which could have been much larger.
Google’s Response
A Google spokesperson, representing Alphabet Inc., confirmed the verdict but stood by the company’s position.
Google had argued throughout the trial that the data collected was “non-personal, pseudonymous, and stored in segregated, secured, and encrypted locations.”
The company also insisted the information was not tied to individual Google accounts or personal identities.
How the Case Began
The lawsuit was first filed in July 2020. It accused Google of breaking its own privacy promises linked to the “Web & App Activity” setting.
US District Judge Richard Seeborg later certified the case as a class action, which expanded it to cover about 98 million Google users and 174 million devices.
Not the First Privacy Battle for Google
This isn’t the first time Google has faced privacy-related lawsuits.
Earlier this year, the company agreed to pay nearly $1.4 billion to settle a case with Texas over alleged violations of the state’s privacy laws.
Back in April 2024, Google also agreed to delete billions of data records from users’ private browsing sessions. That settlement came after claims it had tracked people even while they thought they were browsing in “Incognito” mode.
Monopoly Case Ends Without a Breakup
All of this comes just after Google avoided being broken up in a separate monopoly case.
A US judge stopped short of forcing the company to spin off its Chrome browser or Android operating system, but Google was ordered to share data with competitors.
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