U.S. Jury Says Google Should Pay $425 Million in Privacy Lawsuit ⇥ bbc.com

Peter Hoskins and Lily Jamali, BBC News:

A US federal court has told Google to pay $425m (£316.3m) for breaching users’ privacy by collecting data from millions of users even after they had turned off a tracking feature in their Google accounts.

The verdict comes after a group of users brought the case claiming Google accessed users’ mobile devices to collect, save and use their data, in violation of privacy assurances in its Web & App Activity setting.

Heck of a week for Google. Perhaps it should stop doing so much creepy and anticompetitive stuff.

This lawsuit was filed in July 2020 (PDF), and alleged various privacy violations surrounding Google’s “Web and App Activity” control — a known source of confusion — and Google’s data collection through other services like Firebase and Analytics. Perhaps Google should not operate such a sprawling empire of surveillance by both becoming a smaller business and doing less data collection. Alas, it will not do so voluntarily.