Tech giant Google has agreed to delete a significant amount of search data as part of a settlement to resolve a lawsuit alleging that it tracked millions of US users who believed they were browsing the internet privately.
According to court documents filed on Monday in San Francisco federal court, the proposed settlement requires Google to “delete and/or remediate billions of data records” associated with users who utilized the Chrome browser’s incognito mode.
“This settlement is an historic step in requiring dominant technology companies to be honest in their representations to users about how the companies collect and employ user data, and to delete and remediate data collected,” stated lawyer David Boies in the filing.
The settlement, which awaits approval from Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers, does not involve cash damages but provides an option for Chrome users to file separate lawsuits against Google for monetary compensation if they feel wronged.
“We are pleased to settle this lawsuit, which we always believed was meritless,” said Google spokesman Jorge Castaneda in a statement. “We are happy to delete old technical data that was never associated with an individual and was never used for any form of personalization.”
The lawsuit, initially filed in June 2020, accused Google of infringing on users’ privacy by misleading them with the incognito mode option in the Chrome browser.
Internal Google emails presented in the lawsuit revealed that users in incognito mode were still being tracked for web traffic measurement and ad targeting purposes.
As part of the settlement, Google is required to block third-party tracking “cookies” by default in Incognito Mode for the next five years.
Third-party cookies are small files used to track web navigation for targeted advertising, typically placed by visited sites rather than the browser itself.
