Google has agreed to delete billions of records containing personal information about more than 136 million people in the U.S. who browse the Internet through their Chrome web browser.
The massive house cleanup is part of a settlement in a lawsuit accusing the search giant of illegal surveillance.
The details of the deal were revealed in a court filing on Monday. more than three months later Google and the class action attorneys announced that they had settled a June 2020 lawsuit targeting Chrome’s privacy controls.
The lawsuit accused Google, among other things, of tracking the Internet activities of Chrome users even if they had switched the browser to the “incognito” setting, which is intended to protect them from being tailed by the Mountain View, California-based company.
Google fought the lawsuit vigorously until U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers last August denied a motion to dismiss the case, setting up a possible trial. The settlement was negotiated over the next four months, culminating in Monday’s disclosure of terms, which Rogers must still agree to at a hearing scheduled for July 30 in federal court in Oakland, California.
The settlement requires Google to delete billions of personal data stored in its data centers and make clearer privacy disclosures when enabling Chrome’s incognito option. In addition, additional controls will be introduced aimed at limiting Google’s collection of personal data.
Consumers represented in the class action lawsuit will not receive any damages or other payments as part of the settlement, a point Google emphasized in a statement Monday about the deal.
“We are pleased to resolve this lawsuit, which we have always believed to be without merit,” Google said. The company claimed it was only required to delete “old personal technical data that has never been associated with an individual and has never been used for any form of personalization.”
In court filings, lawyers representing Chrome users painted a very different picture, portraying the settlement as a major victory for privacy in an age of ever-increasing digital surveillance.
The lawyers estimated the settlement at between $4.75 billion and $7.8 billion, based on calculations based primarily on the potential advertising sales that personal data collected through Chrome would have in the past and in the future without the new restrictions can generate.
The settlement also does not protect Google from additional lawsuits involving the same issues addressed in the class action lawsuit. This means that individual consumers can still seek damages against the company by filing their own civil lawsuits in state courts across the United States
Investors don’t appear to be too worried about settlement terms affecting digital advertising sales, which make up the bulk of the more than $300 billion in annual revenue flowing into Google’s parent company Alphabet Inc. Shares of Alphabet rose 3% to close at $155.49 on Monday, giving the company a market value of $1.9 trillion.
Austin Chambers, an attorney specializing in privacy issues at the law firm Dorsey & Whitney, called the settlement terms in the Chrome case a “welcome development” that could impact the way personal information is collected online in the future.
“This prevents companies from profiting from this data and also requires them to undertake complex and costly data deletion measures,” Chambers said. “In some cases, this could have a dramatic impact on products based on these datasets.”
Google still faces legal threats in the regulatory arena that, depending on the outcome, could have a far greater impact on its business.
After the US Department of Justice outlined its allegations that the company was abusing its search engine dominance to stifle competition and innovation during a trial last fall, A federal judge is scheduled to hear closing arguments in the case on May 1 before issuing a ruling, expected in the fall.
Google also faces possible changes to its app store for smartphones powered by its Android software that could later reduce its revenue from commissions A federal jury concluded last year The company operated an illegal monopoly. A hearing to consider possible changes Google may need to make to its Play Store is scheduled for the end of May.