A federal jury in San Francisco has ordered Google to pay \$425 million in damages for violating user privacy through its data collection practices. The class-action suit claimed Google continued gathering data for nearly eight years, even when users had disabled “Web & App Activity” tracking, affecting around 98 million users and 174 million devices.
Plaintiffs had sought over \$31 billion, but the jury awarded partial damages, ruling Google did not act with malice and rejecting punitive claims. Google plans to appeal, arguing its tools were misrepresented and that collected data was pseudonymous and encrypted.
The verdict, seen as a major win for user privacy, adds to Google’s growing legal challenges, including a \$1.4 billion settlement earlier this year with Texas over privacy violations, highlighting increasing scrutiny on tech firms’ use of personal data.