Google must pay US$425 million in class action over privacy, jury rules

The Google logo sits on the company's headquarters in Mountain View, Calif. (AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez, File)

A U.S. federal jury determined on Wednesday that Alphabet’s Google GOOGL.O must pay $425 million for invading users’ privacy by continuing to collect data for millions of users who had switched off a tracking feature in their Google account.

The verdict comes after a trial in the federal court in San Francisco over allegations that Google over an eight-year period accessed users’ mobile devices to collect, save, and use their data, violating privacy assurances under its Web & App Activity setting.

The users had been seeking more than $31 billion in damages.

The jury found Google liable on two of the three claims of privacy violations brought by the plaintiffs. The jury found that Google had not acted with malice, meaning it was not entitled to any punitive damages.

Google plans to appeal, Google spokesperson Jose Castaneda said.

“This decision misunderstands how our products work,” Castaneda said. “Our privacy tools give people control over their data, and when they turn off personalization, we honor that choice.”

David Boies, a lawyer for the users, said in a statement they were “obviously very pleased with the verdict the jury returned.”

The class action lawsuit, filed in July 2020, claimed Google continued to collect users’ data even with the setting turned off through its relationship with apps such as Uber, Venmo and Meta’s META.O Instagram that use certain Google analytics services.

At trial, Google said the collected data was “nonpersonal, pseudonymous, and stored in segregated, secured, and encrypted locations.” Google said the data was not associated with users’ Google accounts or any individual user’s identity.

U.S. District Judge Richard Seeborg certified the case as a class action covering about 98 million Google users and 174 million devices.

Google has faced other privacy lawsuits, including one earlier this year where it paid nearly $1.4 billion in a settlement with Texas over allegations the company violated the state’s privacy laws.

Google in April 2024 agreed to destroy billions of data records of users’ private browsing activities to settle a lawsuit that alleged it tracked people who thought they were browsing privately, including in “Incognito” mode.

Reporting by Deborah Sophia in Bengaluru, Luc Cohen in New York and Kenrick Cai in San Francisco; Editing by David Bario.