San Francisco, September 4(HS):

Google has been ordered by a federal jury in San Francisco to pay $425 million (£316 million) in damages after being found liable for unlawfully harvesting user data despite account holders disabling a key tracking feature. The verdict follows a five-year class-action lawsuit involving nearly 98 million users and 174 million devices, with plaintiffs originally seeking over $31 billion in damages.

Jurors concluded that Google had violated user privacy on two counts, though they rejected claims of malicious intent, sparing the company from additional punitive penalties. The disputed data, gathered over an eight-year period from apps such as Uber, Venmo, and Instagram, was defended by Google as “non-personal, pseudonymous, and securely encrypted.”

The case centered on alleged violations of Google’s own Web & App Activity settings, with users arguing they were misled about how their data was being handled. Google, a subsidiary of Alphabet Inc., denied wrongdoing but acknowledged the jury’s ruling.

This latest judgment adds to Google’s growing list of privacy-related legal battles. Earlier in 2025, the company paid $1.4 billion in a Texas settlement over alleged state privacy law breaches, and in 2024, it agreed to erase billions of records tied to users’ Incognito browsing activities.

The ruling comes only days after Google avoided a forced breakup in a separate antitrust case—although the company was ordered to share more data with competitors instead of divesting its Chrome browser or Android operating system.

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Hindusthan Samachar / Jun Sarkar