Google must pay $350 million to settle data privacy lawsuit: all the details

Google has agreed to pay $350 million to settle a shareholder lawsuit over a security flaw in its now-defunct Google+ social media site.

After more than a year of mediation, a preliminary settlement agreement was filed late Monday in federal court in San Francisco and requires approval by U.S. District Judge Trina Thompson.

It addresses claims that Google learned about a three-year-old software glitch that exposed the personal data of Google+ users by March 2018, but hid the issue for months while publicly emphasizing its commitment to data security. promise.

Shareholders said Google was concerned that disclosing the information would subject it to regulatory and public scrutiny, similar to the scrutiny Facebook faced after London-based Cambridge Analytica collected user data from the 2016 U.S. election.

According to the complaint, as news of the vulnerability surfaced, the stock price of Google parent company Alphabet fell multiple times, wiping tens of billions of dollars off its market value.

The lawsuit, led by Rhode Island Treasurer James Diossa on behalf of a state pension fund that owns Alphabet stock, covers Alphabet shareholders from April 23, 2018, to April 30, 2019.

Google denied wrongdoing in agreeing to the settlement and found no evidence that the data had been misused.

Spokesman Jose Castaneda said: “We regularly identify and fix software issues, disclose relevant information, and take these issues seriously. This issue involves a product that no longer exists, and we are pleased that it has been resolved solve.”

The Mountain View, California-based company reached a related settlement of $7.5 million with Google+ users in 2020.

In 2020, another judge dismissed the shareholder case, but the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit reinstated it in 2021.

Jason Forge, a partner at Robbins Geller Rudman & Dowd who represented the shareholders, said: “The majority believes that no one will recover a penny in this case, and when the first judge granted Google’s dismissal, ‘I would have Told you so’ was deafening.” “It makes Rhode Island and us more determined.”

Lawyers for shareholders may seek up to $66.5 million in fees from the settlement, court documents show.

Monday’s settlement comes 5-1/2 weeks after Google settled a lawsuit that claimed the company secretly tracked the internet usage of millions of people who thought they were browsing privately. Terms of the settlement have not been disclosed.

The case is In Alphabet Inc Securities Litigation, U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, No. 18-06245.

(This story has not been edited by News18 staff and is published from a Yonhap news agency feed – Reuters)