Google agrees to pay $5 billion in settlement for privacy lawsuit over undisclosed tracking of users through Incognito Mode.

(Reuters) – Alphabet’s Google has agreed to settle a lawsuit alleging it secretly tracked the Internet use of millions of people who thought they were browsing privately.

U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers in Oakland, Calif., halted a trial scheduled for Feb. 5, 2024, in the proposed class action on Thursday after attorneys for Google and consumers said they had reached a tentative settlement.

The lawsuit demanded at least $5 billion. Terms of the settlement were not disclosed, but the attorneys said they have agreed to binding terms through mediation and are expected to submit a formal settlement for court approval by Feb. 24, 2024.

Neither Google nor attorneys for the plaintiff’s consumers immediately responded to requests for comment.

The plaintiffs alleged that Google’s analytics, cookies and apps allowed the Alphabet unit to track their activities even when they set Google’s Chrome browser to “incognito” mode and other browsers to “private” browsing mode.

They said he turned Google into an “unfathomable repository of information” by allowing the company to learn about their friends, hobbies, favorite foods, shopping habits and “potentially embarrassing things” they search for online.

In August, Rogers rejected Google’s offer to drop the lawsuit.

He said it was an open question whether Google had made a legally binding promise not to collect users’ data when they browsed in private mode. The judge cited Google’s privacy policy and other company statements that suggested limits on what data it might collect.

The lawsuit, filed in 2020, involved “millions” of Google users since June 1, 2016, and sought at least $5,000 in damages per user for violating federal wiretapping and California privacy laws.

The case is Brown et al v. Google LLC et al, US District Court, Northern District of California, No. 20-03664.