A United States federal jury has ordered Google to pay $425 million in damages for secretly collecting user data from smartphone apps, even when people had turned on privacy settings.
The ruling came on Wednesday at the end of a class action trial in San Francisco. Lawyers for the plaintiffs said the case exposed “Google’s illegal interception of consumers’ private activity on mobile applications.”
They argued that the tech giant tracked, collected, and sold app usage data without the consent of users, despite privacy settings meant to protect them. “Google’s privacy promises and assurances are blatant lies,” the plaintiffs’ attorneys stated in court filings.
Reacting to the decision, Google’s spokesperson, Jose Castaneda, said the company would challenge the ruling. “This decision misunderstands how our products work, and we will appeal it. Our privacy tools give people control over their data, and when they turn off personalisation, we honour that choice,” he said.
The judgment came just a day after Google secured a win in Washington, DC, where a federal judge dismissed the government’s push for the company to sell its Chrome web browser as part of an antitrust case.
Google has faced rising scrutiny worldwide over how it handles user data, especially through tracking tools like cookies. On the same day of the US ruling, France’s data protection regulator, CNIL, also fined Google €325 million ($348 million) for failing to properly obtain consent before placing advertising cookies on users’ browsers.
It was the third major penalty against Google in France, after fines of €100 million in 2020 and €150 million in 2021. CNIL also fined fashion retailer Shein €150 million ($175 million) for similar privacy violations.
The repeated legal battles highlight the ongoing tension between Google’s ad-driven business model and global calls for stronger data privacy protections.
