US Jury Orders Google to Pay Damages for 'Privacy Violation'... Company to Appeal

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A U.S. federal jury has ordered Google to pay $425 million (approximately 592 billion won) in damages, ruling that the company violated privacy by continuing to collect data from millions of users who had turned off the 'tracking' feature in their accounts.

On September 3 (local time), U.S. business media outlet CNBC reported that a jury at the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California reached this verdict in a class action lawsuit. The jury found that Google collected, stored, and used user information from mobile devices even when users had disabled 'Web & App Activity' in Google Account settings.

The plaintiffs had initially sought $31 billion (about 43.16 trillion won) in damages, but the jury concluded that Google did not act maliciously and therefore was not subject to punitive damages.

In this class action lawsuit filed in 2020, the plaintiffs argued that Google continued to collect user data for eight years, even after users turned off 'Web & App Activity,' thereby violating 'privacy guarantees' through its relationships with apps utilizing Google Analytics, such as Uber, Venmo, and Instagram.

Google plans to appeal. Google spokesperson Jose Castaneda stated, "This decision misinterprets how our products work. Our privacy tools give users control over their information, and when users turn off personalization features, we respect that choice," adding that the company intends to appeal.

During the trial, Google countered that the data collected was "non-personal, pseudonymized, stored separately, and encrypted," and argued that this data is not linked to users' Google accounts or to the identity of individual users.

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