Google ordered to pay $5 billion in lawsuit for tracking users in Chrome browser’s ‘incognito’ mode

Google has reached a settlement in a consumer privacy lawsuit that demanded a minimum of $5 billion in compensation. The lawsuit accused Google of monitoring the activities of users who believed they were browsing the internet privately. The focus of the legal action was Google’s Chrome browser’s “incognito” mode, which allegedly misled users into thinking their online activities were not being tracked by the tech giant. However, internal emails presented during the lawsuit revealed that Google was indeed monitoring users in incognito mode to measure web traffic and facilitate ad sales.

The judge confirmed in court that Google’s lawyers reached a tentative agreement to settle a class-action lawsuit originally filed in 2020 that alleged “millions of individuals” were likely affected.

The plaintiffs’ lawyers are seeking at least $5,000 for each user who was tracked by the company’s Google Analytics or Ad Manager services, even if they were in private browsing mode and not logged into their Google account.

This would have been at least $5 billion, although the settlement amount is unlikely to reach that amount, and no amount was given in the preliminary settlement between the parties.

Google and consumer advocates did not respond to AFP’s request for comment.

The settlement comes just weeks after Google was denied a request to have a judge decide the case. A jury trial was scheduled to begin next year.

The suit, filed in a California court, alleged that Google’s practices “intentionally” violated users’ privacy by tricking them into using the incognito option.

The original complaint alleged that Google and its employees had been given “the power to learn intimate details about individuals’ lives, interests, and Internet usage.”

“Google has made itself an unfathomable amount of information so detailed and vast that George Orwell could never have imagined it,” it added.

The official settlement is expected to be approved by the court by February 24, 2024.

Class action lawsuits have become the main venue for suing big tech companies over privacy issues in the United States, where there is no comprehensive law governing the handling of personal data.

In August, Google paid $23 million to settle a long-running case over giving third parties access to users’ search data.

In 2022, Facebook’s parent company Meta settled a similar case and agreed to pay $725 million for processing user data.