Alphabet’s Google has reached a preliminary settlement in a lawsuit accusing the company of secretly tracking the internet activity of millions of users who believed they were browsing privately. The proposed class action lawsuit sought a minimum of $5 billion in damages. U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers in Oakland, California, has put the scheduled trial on hold, with settlement terms undisclosed. The parties have agreed to a binding term sheet through mediation, and a formal settlement is expected to be presented for court approval by February 24, 2024.
The plaintiffs alleged that Google’s analytics, cookies, and apps enabled the company to track their activities, even when users set Google’s Chrome browser to “Incognito” mode or other browsers to “private” browsing mode. The lawsuit claimed that Google, through these practices, became an “unaccountable trove of information,” obtaining details about users’ friends, hobbies, preferences, shopping habits, and potentially embarrassing online searches.
In August, Judge Rogers rejected Google’s attempt to dismiss the lawsuit, stating that it was unclear whether Google had made a legally binding promise not to collect users’ data in private mode. The lawsuit, filed in 2020, covered millions of Google users since June 1, 2016, seeking damages of at least $5,000 per user for alleged violations of federal wiretapping and California privacy laws. The case is Brown et al v Google LLC et al, U.S. District Court, Northern District of California, No. 20-03664.