Google hit with multimillion-dollar fine for spying on users

A San Francisco jury has ordered Google to pay $425.7 million for violating users’ right to privacy.

According to Bloomberg, the class-action lawsuit against the tech giant was first filed in 2020. Prosecutors argued that since 2016, Google continued collecting data from third-party apps even when users disabled the “Web & App Activity” setting.

Jurors found the company guilty of privacy violations but rejected claims of computer fraud. While the payout is far smaller than the $31 billion sought by plaintiffs, it still ranks among the largest awards in U.S. data privacy cases.

This is Google’s second major court defeat this summer. In July, a California court ordered the company to pay $314 million in another class-action case. At the time, Google was found guilty of using mobile internet traffic from Android devices without user consent, with the collected data later used for targeted advertising.

Google may be fined over illegal data collection

A jury has ordered Google to pay $314 million over claims it illegally collected data from Android users without their consent.

Durov's CodeIgor Savkin