To resolve a lawsuit alleging that it surreptitiously monitored the internet activity of users who believed they were surfing in private, Google Agrees to Delete Incognito Mode Browsing Data to Settle Consumer Privacy Lawsuit.
The settlement’s terms were submitted to the federal court in Oakland, California on Monday, and US District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers must approve them.
Plaintiffs’ attorneys estimated the agreement’s value at $5 billion and $7.8 billion. Users have the option to sue Google individually for damages, but the firm is not paying any.
Millions of Google users have utilized incognito private browsing since June 1, 2016, and the class action began four years later in 2020.
People claimed that Google improperly tracked users who turned their Chrome browser to “Incognito” mode and other browsers to “private” browsing mode, using Google’s analytics, cookies, and apps.
They claimed that by allowing Google to learn about their acquaintances, favorite cuisines, pastimes, shopping patterns, and the “most intimate and potentially embarrassing things” they look for online, this transformed Google into a “unaccountable trove of information”.
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As part of the settlement, Google will—as it has already started—update its disclosures on the data it gathers during “private” surfing. Additionally, it will grant users of Incognito a five-year restriction on third-party cookies.
“The result is that Google will collect less data from users’ private browsing sessions and that Google will make less money from the data,” the plaintiffs’ lawyers wrote.
Google, which has long seen the lawsuit as baseless, was happy to reach a settlement, according to Google spokesman Jose Castaneda.
“We never associate data with users when they use Incognito mode,” Castaneda said. “We are happy to delete old technical data that was never associated with an individual and was never used for any form of personalization.”
David Boies, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, in a statement called the settlement “a historic step in requiring honesty and accountability from dominant technology companies.”
December saw the reaching of a preliminary settlement, postponing the trial that was due for February 5, 2024. At the time, terms weren’t disclosed. Later on, the plaintiffs’ attorneys intend to demand an undisclosed amount of legal expenses from Google.
Alphabet is headquartered in California’s Mountain View.
U.S. District Court, Northern District of California, Case No. 20-03664; Brown et al. v. Google LLC & al.