Google has agreed to delete billions of records containing personal information collected from more than 136 million people in the United States who browse the Internet using the Chrome web browser.
The massive housecleaning is part of a settlement in a lawsuit accusing the search giant of illegal surveillance.
Details of the settlement emerged in a court filing Monday, more than three months after Google and the lawyers handling the class-action case revealed they had settled a June 2020 lawsuit challenging Chrome’s privacy controls.
Among other allegations, the lawsuit accused Google of tracking Chrome users’ Internet activity even when they had the browser set to the “Incognito” setting that is supposed to protect them from being stalked by the Mountain View, California-based company.
Google fought the lawsuit vigorously until U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers denied a request to dismiss the case last August, setting up a potential trial. The deal was negotiated over the next four months, culminating Monday in the disclosure of the terms, which Rogers must still approve during a hearing scheduled for July 30 in Oakland, California, federal court.
The settlement requires Google to delete billions of personal data stored in its data centers and to provide more prominent privacy policies on Chrome’s incognito option when it is turned on. It also imposes other controls designed to limit Google’s collection of personal information.
Consumers represented in the class action lawsuit will not receive any damages or other payments in the settlement, a point Google emphasized in a statement Monday about the settlement.
“We are pleased to resolve this lawsuit, which we have always believed to be without merit,” Google said. The company said it only needs 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 documents, lawyers representing Chrome users painted a very different picture, describing the settlement as a major victory for personal privacy in an era of ever-increasing digital surveillance.
Lawyers valued the deal at between $4.75 billion and $7.8 billion, based on calculations based primarily on potential ad 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 further lawsuits revolving around the same issues addressed in the class action case. This means that individual consumers can still bring damages claims against the company by filing their own civil complaints in U.S. state courts
Investors apparently aren’t too concerned about transaction terms impacting digital ad sales that account for most of the more than $300 billion in annual revenue flowing into Google’s parent company, Alphabet Inc. Alphabet shares rose by 3% to close Monday at $155.49. , giving the company a market value of $1.9 trillion.
Austin Chambers, a lawyer specializing in data privacy issues at the firm Dorsey & Whitney, described the terms of the settlement in the Chrome case as a “positive development” that could affect how personal information will be collected online in future.
“This prevents companies from profiting from that data and also requires them to undertake complex and expensive data deletion efforts,” Chambers said. “In some cases, this could have a dramatic impact on products built around those datasets.”
Google is still facing legal threats on the regulatory frontier that could have a much bigger impact on its business, depending on the outcomes.
After the U.S. Department of Justice laid out its allegations that the company is abusing its search engine’s dominant position to thwart competition and innovation during a trial last fall, a federal judge will hear closing arguments of the case on May 1 before issuing an early ruling in the autumn.
Google is also facing potential changes to its app store for smartphones powered by its Android software that could reduce its commission revenue after a federal jury last year concluded that the company operated an illegal monopoly. A hearing is scheduled for the end of May to examine possible revisions Google may need to make to its Play Store.