Google misled users about their privacy and now owes them $425m, says court

A court has ordered Google to pay $425m in a class action after finding it misled users about their online privacy. The suit began in July 2020 when Anibal Rodriguez filed a case arguing that Google’s Web & App Activity setting misrepresented data collection. The data was reportedly gathered even after users switched off data collection, despite claims of anonymisation.

Google harvested information via Firebase, which monitors activities across 1.5 million apps and operates separately from the Web & App Activity setting, and data collection was alleged to occur in 97% of the top thousand Android apps and 54% of leading iOS apps, including Uber, Venmo, Shazam, the New York Times, Duolingo and Instagram, according to Bloomberg Law.

The argument claimed that 98 million Google users were led to believe their actions were completely private, though the company plans to appeal, saying its products give people control over their data. According to the court, Google’s lawyers argued users were properly informed, but jurors were not convinced.