Google will destroy a vast trove of data as part of a settlement following a lawsuit accusing the search giant of tracking consumers even as they browsed the web using “incognito” mode, which apparently preserves user privacy. people’s online activity.
Details of the settlement were disclosed Monday in San Francisco federal court, with a legal filing saying Google will “delete and/or correct billions of data records that reflect class members’ private browsing activities.”
The value of the settlement is more than $5 billion, according to the filing Monday.
The settlement stems from a 2020 lawsuit that claimed Google misled users into believing that it would not track their internet activities while they were using incognito. The settlement also requires Google to change private browsing mode so that users can block third-party cookies by default for the next five years.
“This settlement is a historic step in requiring dominant technology companies to be honest in their disclosures to users about how they collect and use user data, and to delete and correct collected data,” the filing says of settlement.
Although Google agreed to the initial settlement in December, the filing Monday provides more details about the agreement between the tech giant and the plaintiffs, consumers represented by attorney David Boies of Boies Schiller Flexner and others lawyers.
Neither Google nor Boies Schiller Flexner immediately responded to a request for comment.
“This agreement ensures real accountability and transparency from the world’s largest data collector and marks an important step toward improving and respecting our right to privacy on the Internet,” the court document said.
—With reporting from the Associated Press.
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