"Google must pay $425 million in class action over privacy, U.S. jury rules", 4 September 2025

A U.S. federal jury determined on Wednesday that Alphabet's Google must pay $425 million for invading users' privacy by continuing to collect data for millions of users who had switched off a tracking feature in their Google account.

The verdict comes after a trial in the federal court in San Francisco over allegations that Google over an eight-year period accessed users' mobile devices to collect, save, and use their data, violating privacy assurances under its Web & App Activity setting.

The users had been seeking more than $31 billion in damages.

The jury found Google liable on two of the three claims of privacy violations brought by the plaintiffs. The jury found that Google had not acted with malice, meaning it was not entitled to any punitive damages.

Google plans to appeal...

"This decision misunderstands how our products work," Castaneda said. "Our privacy tools give people control over their data, and when they turn off personalization, we honor that choice.”...

The class action lawsuit, filed in July 2020, claimed Google continued to collect users' data even with the setting turned off through its relationship with apps such as Uber, Venmo and Meta's Instagram that use certain Google analytics services.

At trial, Google said the collected data was "nonpersonal, pseudonymous, and stored in segregated, secured, and encrypted locations."...

Google in April 2024 agreed to destroy billions of data records of users' private browsing activities to settle a lawsuit that alleged it tracked people who thought they were browsing privately, including in "Incognito" mode.