Jury orders Google to pay $425 million for unlawfully tracking millions of users

What just happened? A federal jury in San Francisco has ruled that Google must pay $425 million for unlawfully tracking millions of users who believed they had disabled data collection on their accounts. The verdict concludes a trial in which plaintiffs argued that Google violated its own privacy assurances through the Web & App Activity setting, collecting information from mobile devices over an eight-year period.

The Web & App Activity feature is a central component of Google's privacy controls, designed to let users manage whether their searches, location history, and interactions with Google services or partner websites and apps are stored.

When enabled, the setting can retain details such as search history, activity in Google apps, general location based on device or IP address, and browsing performed while signed into Chrome or Android devices. Users have the option to disable feature, which, according to Google's privacy documentation, should ...