Google will delete billions of records containing personal information that the company collected from over 136 million Chrome users.
The agreement comes as part of a settlement in a privacy lawsuit which accused the tech giant of illegal surveillance.
Driving the news: The lawsuit alleged that Google was tracking Chrome users’ internet activity even when they were using the “Incognito” mode designed to protect their privacy.
- The settlement also requires Google to provide more prominent privacy disclosures about Chrome’s Incognito option and implement controls to limit the collection of personal information.
- The settlement, which still requires approval from a federal court, does not involve any monetary damages for the class-action lawsuit represented by consumers.
- While Google claims the lawsuit was “meritless” and only involves the deletion of old impersonal technical data, the attorneys representing users value the settlement at $4.75 billion to $7.8 billion based on potential ad sales generated from the collected data.
- The settlement does not prevent individual consumers from filing their own lawsuits against Google for similar privacy concerns in state courts.
What they’re saying: “We are pleased to settle this lawsuit, which we always believed was meritless,” Google said in a statement.
- Google said the data that it is required to delete was never associated with an individual and was never used for any form of personalization.
