Google has struck a settlement to address a US lawsuit claiming that it breached consumers’ privacy by following them even when they were using “private mode” for their browsing.
The world’s most popular search engine and its parent business Alphabet were sued for at least $5 billion (£3.9 billion) in damages.
Big internet corporations are under increased scrutiny in the US and internationally for their business practices.
Attorneys representing Google and its users did not react to these statements straight away.
On Thursday, US District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers postponed the case’s scheduled trial in California after the revelation by the counsel that they had agreed an early settlement.
Earlier this year, Judge Rogers declined Google’s plea to have the case dismissed, indicating that she did not think customers had given their approval for Google to obtain data about their internet habits.
The settlement’s specifics remained secret. Nonetheless, by February 2024, lawyers are obliged to file a formal settlement for the court’s approval.
The legal firm Boies Schiller Flexner filed the class action complaint in 2020, stating that Google continued to monitor consumers’ activity even after they switched their other browsers to “private mode” and their Google Chrome browser to “Incognito” mode.
As a consequence, it was argued, Google has become a “unaccountable trove of information” on user preferences and “potentially embarrassing things”.
Furthermore, it asserted that Google was unable to “keep up the illegal and covert data collection from almost every American with a computer or phone.”
Even though many users assumed otherwise, Google claimed to have been upfront about the data it acquired while users viewed in private mode.
The search engine said that site owners could “better evaluate the performance of their content, products, marketing and more” with the help of search history collection, even in private viewing mode.
Users of Google’s Chrome browser have the option to search the internet in private mode without having their activities logged to the browser or device. However, the websites you visit can track use using technology like Google Analytics.
