Google has agreed to settle a $5 billion class-action privacy lawsuit that alleges the tech giant has been tracking people using the “incognito” mode in its Chrome browser.
The lawsuit was filed in 2020 and claimed that Google had misled the public into believing their activity would not be tracked while using the private browser.
WTOP reports that the plaintiffs claimed Google continued to “catalog details of users’ site visits and activities despite their use of supposedly ‘private’ browsing.”
This act gave Google an “unaccountable trove of information” from people who believed they were not being monitored.
“Google has made itself an unaccountable trove of information so detailed and expansive that George Orwell could never have dreamed it,” the lawsuit said.
The settlement terms have not been made public and will still need to be approved by a judge.
Yahoo News reports:
Lawyers for the plaintiffs were seeking at least $5,000 for each user it said had been tracked by the firm’s Google Analytics or Ad Manager services even when in the private browsing mode and not logged into their Google account.
This would have amounted to at least $5 billion, though the settlement amount will likely not reach that figure, and no amount was given for the preliminary settlement between the parties.
A final settlement agreement is expected to be provided to the court by February 24.