Google has reached a settlement worth $5 billion in the high-profile lawsuit that accused it of spying on users who browsed the internet in the search engine’s ‘incognito’ mode.
The class-action lawsuit targeted Google’s incognito feature, which, according to Google, allows a user to browse the internet without their activity data being saved. The case put Google’s popular private browsing mode in the regulatory glare and levelled allegations against the firm that it misled consumers about its privacy practices.
The agreement between Google lawyers and advocates for consumers was reached on Thursday, January 28, 2023. No details were made publicly available. A formal settlement is expected to be presented in the court for approval by February 24, 2024, however.
The complaint said Google surreptitiously tracked activity data of millions of internet users while they were browsing in the incognito mode. It added Google did not only track users’ activity in the incognito mode, but also collected information about their online engagement in private mode on other browsers such as Safari.
The lawsuit was filed in 2020 under the California privacy and federal wiretapping laws, and targeted Google’s activities since 2016. In August 2023, Google attempted to have the lawsuit dismissed by filing a motion (request). However, the court rejected it on the grounds that it could not be established that users gave informed consent to Google to collect their personal information.
The lawsuit was expected to have wide-ranging implications for the search engine giant, which has repeatedly come under regulatory scrutiny for misleading users about its privacy policy. The consumer privacy case accused Google of surreptitiously harvesting personal data through its analytics, cookies, and apps. The collected data included information about users’ friends, their shopping habits, favourite meals, and “potentially embarrassing things” they looked up online.
The lawsuit sought at least $5,000 in damages per user.
