Alphabet’s Google has agreed to settle a consumer-privacy $5billion lawsuit that alleged that the foremost search company secretly tracked millions of people who thought they were browsing the internet privately.
United States District Judge, Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers, in Oakland, California, put a scheduled February 5, 2024 trial in the proposed class action on hold on Thursday, after lawyers for Google and for consumers said they had reached a preliminary settlement.
According to a Reuters report on Thursday, the lawsuit sought at least $5billion. Though the Settlement Terms were not disclosed, the lawyers to the parties said they are expected to present a formal settlement for court approval on February 24, 2024.
The plaintiffs claim Google’s GOOGL, -0.10% GOOG, -0.11% analytics, cookies and apps let the company track their activity even when they set Google’s Chrome browser to “Incognito” mode and other browsers to “private” browsing status.
The develpment, they assert, turned Google into an “unaccountable trove of information” to learn about their friends, shopping habits and “potentially embarrassing things” they sought online.
