In the “Pfizer machinations article” from March 2022, I showed which criminal activities Pfizer was involved in and which fines, which now run into the billions, Pfizer had to pay:
The biggest “bummer” came in 2009, when Pfizer was fined $2.3 million for fraud. Legally speaking, Pfizer is an entity with a criminal record and is characterized primarily by repeat offenses, which indicates an unwillingness to comply with legal practices.
Can you still trust a company like this?
This practice of ignoring applicable law does not seem to be unique to the pharmaceutical industry.
Google is following suit
From a very unsuspicious source (Reuters) comes the news on December 29, 2023 that Google is ready to pay $5 billion. [1]
The reason for this was that Google had secretly monitored millions of people on the Internet who were under the mistaken impression that their Internet access was private, i.e. without tracking, etc. Those affected then filed a class action lawsuit, which has now been temporarily suspended because Google and the plaintiffs are close to reaching an agreement.
The lawsuit was for at least $5 billion. During mediation discussions between the plaintiffs and Google’s lawyers, an agreement was reached on a formal settlement of the conflict. What the compromise looks like will be heard in court at the end of February 2024.
The plaintiffs alleged that Google’s analytics, cookies and apps allowed the Alphabet parent company to track their activities even when they set Google’s Chrome browser to “incognito” mode and other browsers to “private” browsing mode .
They said this turns Google into an “uncontrollable source of information” by allowing the company to learn about friends, hobbies, favorite foods, shopping habits and “potentially embarrassing things” they search for online. In August, the judge rejected Google’s request to dismiss the lawsuit.
The lawsuit, filed in 2020, affected “millions” of Google users since June 1, 2016, and sought at least $5,000 in damages per user for violations of federal wiretap laws and California privacy laws.
Conclusion
$5 billion is not a piece of cake. But it is to be feared that this “expense” was already planned for, and that the spying on users has flushed more than just this 5 billion into Google’s coffers. Or that this is an important field experiment on how to optimally set up the spying and control of citizens via the Internet. Or both.
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Those:
[1] Google settles $5 billion consumer privacy lawsuit | Reuters
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