Judge: Google’s Tracking Not Harmful ⇥ blogs.wsj.com

Elizabeth Dwoskin and Rolfe Winkler, Wall Street Journal

U.S. District Judge Sue Robinson wrote that [Google and two other companies] had circumvented [Safari and IE’s] settings, allowing users’ personal information to be sold to ad companies. But the judge said that the plaintiffs couldn’t show that they suffered because the companies collected and sold their information.

Google acquired information in a way they knew was incongruent with the users’ preferences, as defined through their browser settings, and sold that information to advertisers. This much was admitted, so how is it not harmful?