From PC Mag: A jury has ordered Google to pay $425 million for collecting users' data even after they disabled a tracking feature on their Google accounts.
As Reuters reports, the class-action lawsuit was filed in 2020, and it accused Google of collecting search and activity data through third-party apps like Uber, Venmo, and Instagram when users turned off the "Web & App Activity" setting for their Google accounts.
When enabled, the feature allows Google to collect your search and activity history and provide personalized search results and ads. During the trial, Google argued it only collected "nonpersonal, pseudonymous, and stored in segregated, secured, and encrypted locations," Reuters says. However, the jury found Google liable for two of three privacy violation claims.
The class-action covers about 98 million users and 174 million devices. The plaintiffs had demanded $31 billion in damages for data collected between 2016 and 2024. However, the jury ruled against punitive damages, as it found that Google had not acted with malicious intent, Reuters notes.
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