San Francisco (TDI): Alphabet’s Google was hit with heavy penalties on both sides of the Atlantic this week, ordered to pay $425 million by a US jury and fined €325 million ($381 million) in France over violations of user privacy.
In San Francisco, a federal jury found that Google improperly collected data from millions of users who had switched off tracking in their account settings. The case centered on allegations that, over an eight-year period, the company continued to access and use personal data through its Web & App Activity feature despite assurances to the contrary, according to Reuters.
The lawsuit, filed in 2020, represented nearly 100 million users and 174 million devices. Plaintiffs had sought $31 billion in damages, but the jury found Google liable on only two of three privacy claims, ruling out punitive damages as it did not find malice. Google denied wrongdoing but confirmed it would comply with the verdict.
At trial, Google argued that the data in question was anonymized, encrypted, and not tied to individual users. However, the jury sided with plaintiffs who claimed Google continued gathering information through its integration with apps such as Uber, Venmo, and Instagram.
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This is not Google’s first major privacy case. Earlier this year, it paid almost $1.4 billion to settle allegations in Texas and in 2024 agreed to delete billions of records tied to its “Incognito” browsing mode.
Meanwhile, in France, the data regulator CNIL fined Google for showing ads in Gmail inboxes without consent and for creating accounts that automatically enabled ad trackers. The watchdog gave the company six months to fix the issues, warning of daily fines of €100,000 if it fails to comply.
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Google said it is reviewing the decision and noted that it has already rolled out updates allowing users to decline personalized ads more easily when creating accounts and has changed how ads appear in Gmail.
Combined, the penalties amount to more than $800 million, reflecting growing regulatory pressure worldwide on how tech giants handle user data.
