A federal jury on Wednesday decided that Alphabet’s Google will pay $ 425 million to invade users’ privacy by continuing to collect data for millions of users who had turned off a tracking feature into their Google account.
The verdict followed a trial in the federal court in San Francisco on accusations that Google has access to users’ mobile devices for more than eight years to collect, store and use their data, breaking privacy insurance policies during its web and app activity.
The users had sought more than $ 31 billion in damage.
The jury found that Google was responsible for two of the three demands of privacy violations that the plaintiffs raised. However, it decided that Google had not acted with evil, which means that the company was not responsible for any penalty damage.
A spokesman for Google confirmed the verdict. Google had denied any wrongdoing.
The Law of Class Case Submitted in July 2020 claimed that Google continued to collect users’ data, even when the setting was turned off, through its connections with apps such as Uber, Venmo and Meta’s Instagram, which depend on Google’s analysis services.
During the trial, Google claimed that the data collected was “non -personal, pseudonymous and stored in separate, secured and encrypted locations.” The company said the data was not tied to users’ Google accounts or any individual identity.
US district judge Richard Seeborg certified the case as a class case covering about 98 million Google users and 174 million units.
Google has faced other lawsuits, including one earlier this year, paid almost $ 1.4 billion in a solution with Texas over claims that the company violated the state’s privacy legislation.
In April 2024, Google also agreed to destroy billions of data registrations of users’ private browsing activities to settle another trial that claimed that it was traced to people who thought they were searching privately, including in “Incognito” mode.
