Google agreed to settle a lawsuit in the US for $5 billion. The company has been accused of tracking users' activities even when they were using incognito mode.
Alphabet, which owns Google, has agreed to settle a lawsuit alleging it secretly tracked the Internet use of millions of people who believed they were browsing websites confidentially. Google lawyers and user representatives reported reaching a preliminary agreement. The lawsuit demanded at least $5 billion. Details of the settlement were not disclosed, but lawyers said they agreed to the terms, which will be presented to the court for approval in February 2024. The plaintiffs alleged that Google's analytics, cookies and apps allow the company to track their activity even in incognito mode on Chrome and other browsers.
What happened?
The lawsuit against Google was filed in 2020 and seeks at least $5,000 in damages for each victim.
Earlier this month, the tech giant said it would pay $700 million to settle a lawsuit filed by a group of US states accusing Google of stifling competition in the Play Store on Android devices.
This comes days after Google lost a US court battle against developer Epic Games. The video game developer sued the company back in 2020 for illegally turning its Google Play app store and payment service into an illegal monopoly.