U.S. Google users who won a $425M privacy verdict now want the company to forfeit $2.36B in profits

Google is pushing back against a class action lawsuit that already resulted in a $425 million privacy verdict and is now aiming for an additional $2.36 billion in compensation. 

About 98 million of Google’s consumers are seeking $2.36 billion in additional compensation, asking the company to forfeit profits gotten from the mishandling of user data. 

Consumers seeking billions from Google following $425 million verdict 

U.S. Google users who secured a $425 million jury verdict last month in a long-running privacy class action are now seeking an additional $2.36 billion from the company. In a new court filing on Wednesday, the plaintiffs asked Chief U.S. District Judge Richard Seeborg in San Francisco to order Alphabet’s Google to give up the profits it allegedly earned through data practices the jury found unlawful.

The $2.36 billion in question was described as a “conservative approximation” of the profits Google gained by secretly collecting app activity data from millions of users who had turned off a key tracking feature. The class action is centered on the company’s Web & App Activity setting, which the plaintiffs said misled users into believing their data would not be collected once disabled.

According to the filing, the jury determined that Google’s conduct was “highly offensive, harmful, and without consent.” The plaintiffs argued that the initial damages were “clearly insufficient to remedy the ongoing and irreparable harm that Google’s conduct continues to inflict.” They pointed out that despite the verdict, Google did not alter its privacy disclosures or its data collection practices.

Google has so far denied any wrongdoing and maintains that the data collected was anonymized. A company spokesperson said Google plans to appeal the jury’s verdict. The company has also argued that its privacy settings provide users with meaningful control over their data and that the claims made in the lawsuit misrepresent how its products function.

Google urges to overturn the verdict 

In a separate filing also made on Wednesday, Google urged Judge Seeborg to decertify the class of the 98 million users and 174 million devices covered by the lawsuit. The company argued that the case relies on individualized factors, such as the specific apps used and each user’s expectations about privacy, which it said make class treatment inappropriate.

Google also asked the court to vacate the verdict entirely, arguing that there were insufficient common issues to justify a class-wide judgment. The company reiterated its position that no privacy laws were violated and that its practices complied with its user agreements and privacy policies.

The lawsuit, first filed in 2020, alleged that over an eight-year period, Google unlawfully accessed data from users’ mobile devices, including their app usage patterns and personal identifiers, even after they had opted out of tracking through their account settings. Plaintiffs argued this violated federal and state privacy laws, as well as Google’s own representations to users.

The jury ultimately sided with the plaintiffs on two of the three privacy claims, finding that Google’s data collection practices breached user consent and privacy assurances. However, the $425 million verdict was far below the more than $31 billion in damages initially sought at trial.

If the court rules in favor of the plaintiffs again, the disgorgement would mark one of the largest financial penalties ever imposed in a U.S. privacy case.

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