Google has been ordered to pay $425 million in damages after a U.S. federal jury ruled that the company violated user privacy by collecting data from people who had opted out of certain tracking settings.
The class-action lawsuit, which began in 2020, accused Google of continuing to gather information between 2012 and 2020 from users who had disabled the “Web & App Activity” feature. According to the complaint, the company still harvested data through third-party applications and services, despite users believing they had stopped such tracking.
Lawyers for the plaintiffs argued that the breach affected millions, covering an estimated 98 million users and 174 million devices. While the case originally sought more than $31 billion in damages, the jury found Google liable on two out of three claims. It declined to award punitive damages, concluding that Google’s actions were not malicious.
In response, a Google spokesperson maintained that the company respects user privacy choices, insisting that the ruling reflects a misunderstanding of how its systems function. The company said it plans to appeal.
This ruling adds to Google’s growing list of legal battles over privacy. Earlier this year, the company agreed to pay $1.4 billion to settle a case brought by Texas, and last year it committed to destroying billions of browsing records collected through its Incognito mode.
The $425 million judgment is now one of the largest privacy-related verdicts in recent years, underscoring the increasing scrutiny facing big tech companies over how they handle personal data.
