Google has agreed to settle a lawsuit that alleged it was tracking users who thought they were surfing the web privately.
The class action put against the tech giant and its parent company, Alphabet, was at least $5 billion.
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However, US District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers put the scheduled February 2024 trial for the case on hold in California on Thursday (December 28).
The judge was informed by lawyers for Google and for consumers that a preliminary settlement had been reached by the two parties.
While the actual terms of the settlement were not disclosed, the lawyers are expected to present a formal settlement for the court to approve by February 2024.
Initially, the class action lawsuit was filed law firm Boies Schiller Flexner in 2020 and it claimed that Google had been tracking its users' activity even when they set the Google Chrome browser to 'Incognito' mode and other browsers to 'private mode'.
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According to Google, in Incognito mode 'none of your browsing history, cookies and site data, or information entered in forms are saved on your device'.
However, the lawsuit claimed the search engine had become an ‘unaccountable trove of information’ on user preferences and ‘potentially embarrassing things’.
It also alleged that Google could not 'continue to engage in the covert and unauthorized data collection from virtually every American with a computer or phone'.
Judge Rogers had previously rejected Google’s request to dismiss the lawsuit and said it was open question whether the company had made a legally binding promise not to collect users' data when they browsed in private mode.
She went on to quote the company's privacy policy, that suggested there were limits on what information it might collect.
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Social media users, in typical fashion, reacted to this news with a barrage of jokes with many not surprised that there were questions surrounding how much information the search engine was collecting.
“Shocked to learn incognito Mode was keeping tabs on us. Next, you'll tell me Santa isn't real,” joked one user.
“Sorry for those who thought Incognito mode meant browsing was completely private,” another added.
The lawsuit covered ‘millions’ of Google users since June 1, 2016, according to a Reuters report. It also reportedly sought at least $5,000 in damages per user for violations of federal wire-tapping and California privacy laws.
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UNILAD has contacted Google for comment.
Topics: Google, Technology, Money