Google admits secret tracking of millions of users – 12/29/2023 – Tech

Google has agreed to settle a lawsuit alleging the company secretly tracked the internet usage of millions of people who thought they were browsing privately.

Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers of the United States District Court in Oakland on Thursday suspended a trial scheduled for February 5, 2024 in a class-action lawsuit, after lawyers for Google and consumers said they had reached a preliminary agreement.

The process sought at least US$5 billion (R$24.26 billion), but the terms of the agreement reached were not disclosed. Lawyers said they have agreed to a binding proposal through mediation and hope to submit a formal agreement for court approval by February 24, 2024.

Neither Google nor attorneys for the plaintiff consumers immediately responded to requests for comment.

The plaintiffs alleged that Google’s analytics, cookies and apps allowed the company to track their activity, even when they set Google’s Chrome browser to “incognito” mode and other browsers to “private” browsing mode.

They claimed this turned Google into an “uncontrollable collection of information”, allowing the company to know their friends, hobbies, favorite foods, shopping habits and “potentially embarrassing things” they search for online.

Last week, Google lost another court fight and agreed to pay $700 million and allow greater competition in its PlayStore app store. The announcement of the agreement was made by a federal court in San Francisco, USA, this Monday (18) as part of the antitrust trial with US states and consumers.