Google agreed to destroy billions of data records to settle a lawsuit that claimed it secretly tracked the internet usage of people who thought they were browsing privately.

Terms of the settlement were filed Monday in federal court in Oakland, Calif., and require approval by U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers.

The plaintiff’s lawyers valued the agreement at more than $5 billion (approximately Rs. 41,676 crore) and up to $7.8 billion (approximately Rs. 65,017 crore). Google won’t pay any damages, but users can sue the company individually for damages.

The class action lawsuit began in 2020 and covers millions of Google users who have used private browsing since June 1, 2016.

Users claim that Google’s analytics, cookies and apps allow Alphabet’s unit to inappropriately track users who set their Google Chrome browser to “incognito” mode and other browsers to “private” browsing mode.

They said it turned Google into an “irresponsible company” by letting it know about their friends, favorite foods, hobbies, shopping habits and the “most intimate and potentially embarrassing things” they look for online. A treasure trove of information.”

Under the settlement, Google will update its disclosure of information collected during “private” browsing, a process that has already begun. It also allows incognito users to block third-party cookies for five years.

“The result is that Google will collect less data from users’ private browsing sessions and Google will make less money from that data,” the plaintiffs’ attorneys wrote.

Google spokesman Jose Castaneda said the company was pleased to resolve the lawsuit, which it had long believed was without merit.

“We never associate data with users when they use incognito mode,” Castaneda said. “We are happy to remove old technical data that is not personally associated and has never been used for any form of personalization.”

David Boies, an attorney for the plaintiffs, called the settlement “a historic step toward demanding honesty and accountability from dominant technology companies” in a statement.

A tentative settlement was reached in December, averting a trial originally scheduled for February 5, 2024. Terms were not disclosed at the time. Lawyers for the plaintiffs plan to later ask Google to pay unspecified legal fees.

Alphabet is headquartered in Mountain View, California.

The case is Brown et al. v. Google LLC et al., U.S. District Court, Northern District of California, No. 20-03664.

© Thomson Reuters 2024

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