San Francisco:

Google has agreed to delete a vast trove of search data to settle a suit that it tracked millions of US users who thought they were browsing the internet privately.

If a proposed settlement filed Monday in San Francisco federal court is approved by a judge, Google must “delete and/or remediate billions of data records” linked to people using the Chrome browser’s incognito mode, according to court documents.

“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,” lawyer David Boies said in the filing.

A hearing is slated for July 30 before Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers, who is to decide whether to approve the deal that would let Google avoid a trial in the class-action suit.

The settlement calls for no cash damages to be paid but leaves an option for Chrome users who feel they were wronged to sue Google separately to get money.

The suit originally filed in June of 2020 sought at least $5 billion in damages.

“We are pleased to settle this lawsuit, which we always believed was meritless,” Google spokesman Jorge Castaneda said 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 object of the lawsuit was the “Incognito Mode” in the Chrome browser that plaintiffs said gave users a false sense that what they were surfing online was not being tracked by the Silicon Valley tech firm.

But internal Google emails brought forward in the lawsuit demonstrated that users using incognito mode were being followed by the search and advertising behemoth for measuring web traffic and selling ads.

The lawsuit, filed in a California court, claimed Google’s practices had infringed on users’ privacy by intentionally deceiving them with the incognito option.

The original complaint alleged that Google had been given the “power to learn intimate details about individuals’ lives, interests, and internet usage.”

“Google has made itself an unaccountable trove of information so detailed and expansive that George Orwell could never have dreamed it,” it added.

The settlement requires Google, for the next five years, to block third-party tracking “cookies” by default in Incognito Mode.

Third-party cookies are small files which are used to target advertising by tracking web navigation and are placed by visited sites and not by the browser itself.

No cookies?

Google earlier this year began limiting third-party cookies for some users of its Chrome browser, a first step towards eventually abandoning the files that have raised privacy concerns.

Google announced in January 2020 that it would begin eliminating third-party cookies within two years, but the start has been delayed several times amid opposition from web media publishers.

Cookies have recently been subject to greater regulation, including the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation introduced in 2016 as well as regulations in California.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

The Google case centers on the government’s contention that it illegally forged its domination of online search. (File)
| Photo Credit: REUTERS

Google faces its biggest ever legal challenge in a Washington court on Tuesday, as it fends off accusations from the US government that it acted unlawfully to build its overwhelming dominance of online search.

Over ten weeks of testimony involving more than 100 witnesses, Google will try to persuade a federal judge that the landmark case brought by the Department of Justice is without merit.

The trial is the biggest US antitrust case against a big tech company since the same department took on Microsoft more than two decades ago over the dominance of its Windows operating system.

“Technology has progressed a lot in 20 years so what results from this case will have a strong bearing on how tech platforms operate in the future,” said John Lopatka, from Penn State’s School of Law.

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The Google case centers on the government’s contention that it illegally forged its domination of online search by entering into exclusive contracts with device makers, mobile operators and other companies that left rivals no chance to compete.

Through these payments of billions of dollars every year to Apple, Samsung or carriers like T-Mobile or AT&T, Google secured its search engine default status on phones and web browsers and allegedly guaranteed its success to the detriment of competitors.

“Two decades ago, Google became the darling of Silicon Valley as a scrappy start-up with an innovative way to search the emerging internet,” the Justice Department said in its lawsuit. “That Google is long gone.”

The biggest alleged victims in the case are rival search engines that have yet to scratch out a meaningful market share against Google, like Microsoft’s Bing and DuckDuckGo.

90 percent share 

Google remains the world’s preeminent search engine, capturing 90 percent of the market in the United States and across the globe, much of which comes through mobile usage on iPhones and phones running on Google-owned Android.

In its defense the company contends that its success is due to the unbeatable quality of its search engine that has been judged a cut above the rest since its launch in 1998 by founders Sergei Brin and Larry Page.

“In sum, people don’t use Google because they have to — they use it because they want to,” said Kent Walker, Google president of global affairs in a blog post.

The trial will be presided over and decided by Judge Amit P. Mehta, whose ruling would come many months after the roughly three months of hearings.

The stakes for Google are enormous if Mehta upholds any or all of the US government’s arguments.

Remedial action could involve a break up of Google’s far flung business or an order to revamp the way it operates.

The company has faced major legal action in Europe, where it was fined more than 8.2 billion euros ($8.8 billion) for various antitrust violations, although those decisions are under appeal.

Whatever Mehta ends up deciding, the US case will almost certainly be appealed by either side, potentially dragging the case on for years.

Launched in 1998, Washington’s case against Microsoft ended in a settlement in 2001 after an appeal reversed an order that the company be split up.

The US government launched its case against Google during the Trump administration and the suit carried over in the transition to President Joe Biden.

Biden has also made a point of challenging tech giants, but with little to show for it.

In January, Biden’s Department of Justice launched a separate case against Google involving its advertising business and this could go to trial next year.

The company also faces other lawsuits from US states that accuse it of abusing monopolies in ad tech and for blocking competition in its Google Play app store.

Google and the states said on Tuesday that they had reached an agreement in principle to settle the Google Play case.