By MICHAEL LIEDTKE | AP Technology Editor
SAN FRANCISCO — Google has agreed to delete billions of records containing personal information collected from more than 136 million people in the United States surfing the Internet through its Chrome web browser.
The massive housecleaning comes as part of a settlement in a lawsuit accusing the search giant of illegal surveillance.
Details of the settlement were revealed in a court filing Monday, more than three months after Google and class-action lawyers revealed they had resolved a June 2020 lawsuit targeting Chrome’s privacy controls.
Among other allegations, the lawsuit accused Google of tracking Chrome users’ Internet activity even when they switched the browser to the “Incognito” setting, supposedly to protect them from being observed by the Mountain View, California, company.
Google vigorously fought the lawsuit until U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers rejected a request to dismiss it last August, clearing the way for a possible trial. The settlement was negotiated over the next four months, culminating in Monday’s disclosure of the terms, which Rogers must still approve at a hearing scheduled for July 30 in federal court in Oakland, California.
The settlement requires Google to delete billions of personal records stored in its data centers and disclose more privacy information about Chrome’s Incognito option when it is enabled. It also imposes other controls intended to limit Google’s collection of personal information.
Consumers represented in the class-action lawsuit will not receive any damages or other payments as part of the settlement, a point Google emphasized in a statement Monday regarding the agreement.
“We are pleased to settle this lawsuit, which we have always considered to be without merit,” Google said. The company claimed it was only required to “delete old personal technical data that has never been associated with an individual and has never been used for any form of personalization.”
In court papers, lawyers representing Chrome users painted a much different picture, describing the settlement as a major victory for privacy in an age of ever-increasing digital surveillance.
Lawyers valued the settlement at between $4.75 billion and $7.8 billion, relying on calculations based primarily on the potential advertising sales that personal information collected through Chrome could have generated in the past and in the future without the new restrictions.
The settlement also does not protect Google from other lawsuits involving the same issues covered by the class action. This means that individual consumers can still sue for damages against the company by filing their own civil claims in state courts in the United States.
Investors apparently aren’t too worried about settlement terms affecting digital advertising sales that account for the bulk of the more than $300 billion in annual revenue flowing to Google’s parent company, Alphabet Inc. Alphabet shares have rose 3% to close Monday at $155.49. , giving the company a market value of $1.9 trillion.
Austin Chambers, a data privacy lawyer at Dorsey & Whitney, described the settlement terms in the Chrome case as a “welcome development” that could affect how personal information is collected online in the future.
“This prevents companies from profiting from this data and also forces them to undertake complex and costly data removal efforts,” Chambers said. “In some cases, this could have a significant impact on the products built around these data sets. »
Google still faces regulatory legal threats, which could have a much greater impact on its business, depending on the outcome.
After the U.S. Department of Justice presented its allegations that the company abuses its search engine’s dominant position to thwart competition and innovation in a trial last fall, a federal judge is scheduled to hear final arguments in the case on May 1 before issuing a decision expected in 2017. fall.
Google also faces possible changes to its smartphone app store running its Android software that could reduce its commission revenue after a federal jury found last year that the company operated an illegal monopoly . A hearing examining possible revisions that Google could make to its Play Store is scheduled for the end of May.
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