Google receives multi-million dollar fine for collecting data without authorization

Google was sentenced Wednesday in the United States to pay just over $425 million for violating the privacy of nearly 100 million users, from whom it collected data despite deactivating that option, the company confirmed.

A jury in a federal court in San Francisco found the tech giant guilty in a case of “illegally intercepted” Google of private consumer activity on mobile apps, lawyers denounced in a class action filed in July 2020.

“This decision misinterprets how our products work, and we will appeal it,” Google spokesman Jose Castaneda said in a statement. Our privacy tools offer people control over their data, and when they disable customization, we respect that choice.

The plaintiffs, representing some 98 million users, had disabled configurations that followed the web activity and applications.

This decision did not authorize the collection of data from the company’s popular services, such as the Chrome browser, Google Maps, and Google News.

The verdict came a day after a federal judge in Washington gave the Internet giant a victory by rejecting the government’s lawsuit for Google to sell Chrome as part of a major case of unfair competition.

Google has long come under pressure to balance the targeting of lucrative ads, at the core of its financial success, with the protection of users’ privacy.

The Silicon Valley giant has been working to replace the online activity tracking cookies with a less invasive but equally effective mechanism.

Cookies are small files saved in browsers by websites that can collect data about users’ online activity, being essential for online advertising and commercial models of many large platforms.

Wednesday’s fine against Google is the third issued by the National Computer and Freedoms Commission on the use of cookies from the search company, after paying 100 million euros in 2020 and 150 million in 2021.