Jury rules Google must pay $425M in privacy class action lawsuit: report

[Google Cloud]
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A federal jury ruled on Wednesday that Alphabet's Google (NASDAQ:GOOG [https://seekingalpha.com/symbol/GOOG]) (NASDAQ:GOOGL [https://seekingalpha.com/symbol/GOOGL]) must pay $425M for breaching users' privacy by continuing to collect data for millions of users who had switched off a tracking feature in their Google account, Reuters reported.

The verdict comes after a trial in the federal court in San Francisco related to allegations that Google, over an eight-year period, accessed users' mobile devices to collect, save, and use their data, breaching privacy assurances under its Web & App Activity setting, the report added [https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/boards-policy-regulation/google-must-pay-425-million-class-action-over-privacy-jury-rules-2025-09-03/].

Google did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Seeking Alpha.

The users had been seeking over $31B in damages.

The jury found Google liable on two of the three claims of privacy violations brought by the plaintiffs. In addition, the jury found that Google had not acted with malice, meaning it was not entitled to any punitive damages, the report noted.

Google spokesperson Jose Castaneda told the news agency that the company plans to appeal.

"This decision misunderstands how our products work," said Castaneda. "Our privacy tools give people control over their data, and when they turn off personalization, we honor that choice."

David Boies, a lawyer for the users, noted in a statement that they were "obviously very pleased with the verdict the jury returned."

The class action lawsuit, which was filed in July 2020, claimed Google continued to collect users' data even with the setting turned off via its relationship with apps such as Uber, Venmo and Meta's Instagram that use certain Google analytics services, the report added.

At the trial, Google said the collected data was "nonpersonal, pseudonymous, and stored in segregated, secured, and encrypted locations." Google added that the data was not associated with users' Google accounts or any individual user’s identity, the report noted.

U.S. District Judge Richard Seeborg certified the case as a class action covering around 98 million Google users and 174 million devices, the report added.

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