A federal jury in San Francisco ruled Wednesday that Google must pay $425 million after finding the company invaded users’ privacy by collecting data even when people had turned off a tracking feature.
The case centered on Google’s Web & App Activity setting, which is supposed to give users control over whether their activity is saved. According to the lawsuit, Google ignored that choice for more than eight years, quietly gathering data from millions of phones and other devices.
Users had sought more than $31 billion in damages. While the jury found Google liable on two of three privacy claims, it ruled the company did not act with malice, sparing it from additional punitive damages.
Google denied wrongdoing throughout the case. A company spokesperson acknowledged the verdict, but during trial, Google argued that the information it collected was “nonpersonal, pseudonymous, and stored in secure, encrypted locations.” The company insisted the data could not be linked back to individuals or their Google accounts.
The class action lawsuit, first filed in July 2020, covered about 98 million users and 174 million devices. It accused Google of continuing to gather information through third-party apps like Uber, Venmo, and Instagram, which depend on Google’s analytics services.
This is not Google’s first privacy fight. Earlier this year, the company paid nearly $1.4 billion to settle a lawsuit in Texas over state privacy law violations. In April 2024, it also agreed to wipe billions of records from users’ “private browsing” sessions after being accused of tracking activity in Chrome’s Incognito mode.
