As part of the settlement, Google agrees to delete billions of data relating to its users’ activity on the Chrome browser
by Marco Trabucchi
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The terms of the settlement ending the $5 billion class action lawsuit in the United States have been announced. The lawsuit, initiated in 2020, is based on Google’s accusation of having tracked user data on the proprietary Chrome browser for advertising profiling purposes, even when they used the “incognito” browsing mode, which should have guaranteed the anonymity and privacy protection.
Already last December a plea agreement was reached, after the San Francisco judge had denied the dismissal of the case, underlining that the plaintiffs’ accusation of not having been correctly informed was supported by sufficient evidence. These include an email exchange in which chief marketing officer Lorraine Twohill warned CEO Sundar Pichai in 2019 that the ‘incognito’ browsing mode should not be defined as ‘private’ as this fueled possible misunderstandings.
With the agreement, made known in recent days, the Mountain View giant agrees to destroy data collected improperly and to update terms of service on incognito browsing mode, including the option for users to disable cookies third parts. Instead, he cancels the collective compensation of 5 billion dollars requested by the prosecution, but with the option of requesting compensation from Google privately.
For its part, Google does not recognize the validity of the accusation, minimizing the deletion of the data. “We have never associated data with users when they use Incognito mode,” commented Google spokesperson José Castaneda. “We are happy to delete old technical data that has never been associated with an individual and has never been used for any form of personalization.”
The settlement ends at least one legal dispute for Google, with the company remaining busy defending itself on multiple fronts, including allegations of abuse of dominant position and monopolistic practices in the online advertising market, with lawsuits brought by Google’s antitrust regulators the European Union and the United States.