A U.S. federal jury on Wednesday ordered Google to pay about $425 million in damages for illegally collecting data from smartphone app usage even when users had enabled privacy settings, the company confirmed.
“This case is about Google’s illegal interception of consumers’ private activity on mobile applications,” attorneys for the plaintiffs said in a class action lawsuit filed in July 2020.
The verdict came after a trial in San Francisco and followed a separate win for Google a day earlier, when a federal judge in Washington, D.C. rejected the U.S. government’s demand that the tech giant sell its Chrome browser as part of an ongoing antitrust case.
Google said it plans to appeal the ruling. “This decision misunderstands how our products work, and we will appeal it,” spokesperson Jose Castaneda said. “Our privacy tools give people control over their data, and when they turn off personalization, we honor that choice.”
The plaintiffs argued that Google intercepted, tracked, collected, and sold users’ app activity data regardless of their chosen privacy settings, calling the company’s assurances “blatant lies”.
The ruling adds to mounting pressure on Google over data privacy practices. The company has already faced multiple fines from regulators, including €100 million in 2020 and €150 million in 2021 from France’s CNIL over improper use of tracking cookies.
In response, Google reveals it has been developing less invasive tracking technologies as it works to balance user privacy with its advertising-driven business model.
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