Will the $5 Billion Lawsuit Stop Google From Tracking Users’ Browsing?

Google, one of the biggest tech giants globally, has agreed that it will pay $5 billion as a settlement in the lawsuit, which claimed that the company secretly tracks how millions of people surf the Internet, thinking they were browsing privately.

Reuters disclosed this, which revealed that U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers in Oakland, California, extended the trial to February 5, 2024, in the proposed class action on hold on Thursday, after defendants of Google and consumers said they had reached a preliminary settlement.

The lawsuit against Google sought at least $5 billion if won—settlement terms were not disclosed. Still, lawyers said they agreed to a binding term sheet through mediation and expected to present a formal settlement for court approval by February 24, 2024.

The Consumers’ Complaints

The plaintiff said that Google’s analytics, cookies, and apps let the Alphabet unit track their activity even when they set Google’s Chrome browser to “Incognito” mode and other browsers to “private” browsing mode. 

The statement reads,

• They said this turned Google into an “unaccountable trove of information” by letting the company learn about their friends, hobbies, favourite foods, shopping habits, and “potentially embarrassing things” they seek out online.  

• In August, the District Judge, Rogers, rejected Google’s bid to dismiss the lawsuit. She said it was an open question whether Google had made a legally binding promise not to collect users’ data when they browsed in private mode. The judge cited Google’s privacy policy and other statements by the company that suggested limits on what information it might collect. 

The lawsuit was first filed in 2020 and has covered millions of Google users since June 1, 2016. The plaintiff sought at least $5,000 in damages per user for violations of federal wiretapping and California privacy laws.

Google’s Multiple Lawsuits in Recent Times

The tech giants have been involved in a series of consumer privacy lawsuits. In December 2023, it was reported that Google had agreed to pay $630 million to its United States consumers as part of the settlement process for the dispute over Play Store's app distribution.

The firm also agreed to pay $70 million into a fund the states will use, bringing the total settlement to $700 million. In September, the company reached a tentative settlement in a class action lawsuit filed by U.S. states and consumers, initially filed in 2021.

The complaint highlighted Google’s monopoly over app distribution on Android through the Play Store.