Thu, 04 Sep 2025

Thu, 04 Sep 2025 Google told to pay $425m in privacy lawsuit

Google says the decision misunderstands how its products work, and it will appeal the ruling.

* Google has been ordered to pay $425m (£316.3m) in damages for breaching users' privacy by collecting data even after they had turned off tracking features.
* The verdict comes from a US federal court case involving 98 million Google users and 174 million devices.
* The plaintiffs alleged that Google's collection practices extended to hundreds of thousands of smartphone apps, including those from companies like Uber, Lyft, Alibaba, Amazon, Instagram, and Facebook.
* Google claims it honored users' choice to turn off Web & App Activity in their account, but the firm may still collect data for businesses using Google Analytics.
* Separately, a US federal judge has ruled that Google will not have to sell its Chrome web browser, but must share information with competitors and cannot have exclusive contracts.
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