In a court filing on Monday, attorneys for customers who sued the internet behemoth Google agreed to remove information that the company had gathered about users’ internet activities. At the same time, they used its “incognito” private browsing option.
Additionally, Google pledged to keep the modifications made to the Chrome browser’s incognito mode, preventing users from tracking “cookies” for advertising purposes and revealing the precise information it keeps about them. Individual customers still have the option to sue Google for the tracking, but unlike other recent tech lawsuit settlements, this one does not specify how much Google must pay to anyone who was harmed by its activities.
Plaintiffs’ attorneys predict that Google might lose billions as a result of this, but that would need thousands of people to file lawsuits against the business.
David Boies, the chairman of the legal firm that spearheaded the complaint, Boies Schiller Flexner, said in an email that “this settlement is a historic step in requiring honesty and accountability from dominant technology companies.”
“We are happy to have settled for this litigation, which we always thought had no merit. Google spokesman José Castañeda stated, “The plaintiffs originally wanted $5 billion and are receiving zero.” “We are pleased to remove outdated technical data that was never used for personalization purposes and was never linked to an individual.”
The arrangement follows Google’s December legal settlement, which prevented a potentially well-publicized trial. Concerns about how large internet corporations utilize their customers’ data have led to an increase in the number of significant legal and regulatory issues that Google is facing both domestically and internationally. After Epic Games filed a lawsuit against Google earlier this year, a judge determined that the business had violated competition laws in the way it operated its Android app store. This was a significant setback for Google.The business has gradually started to settle cases in place of fighting class-action and government litigation for years over its data collection tactics.
