Google to purge billions of files containing personal data of Chrome users

Google will purge billions of files containing personal data in a settlement of the Chrome privacy case.

Google has agreed to delete billions of records containing personal information from people in the US who used its Chrome web browser.

The purge of information collected from more than 136 million people comes as part of a lawsuit settlement, the details of which emerged in a court filing on Monday.

The lawsuit from 2020 alleges that Google tracked users' internet activity even when they were in "Incognito" mode. 

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Google vigorously fought the lawsuit until US District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers rejected a request to dismiss the case last August, setting up a potential trial.

The settlement was negotiated over the next four months, culminating in Monday's disclosure of the terms, which Rogers still must approve during a hearing scheduled for July 30 in Oakland, California, federal court.

The settlement requires Google to delete billions of personal records stored in its data centres. It must also make more prominent privacy disclosures about Chrome's Incognito mode when it is activated.

The settlement also imposes other controls meant to limit Google's collection of personal data.

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'Pleased to settle this lawsuit'

"We are pleased to settle this lawsuit, which we always believed was meritless," Google said.

The company asserted it is only being required to "delete old personal technical data that was never associated with an individual and was never used for any form of personalisation".

Consumers represented in the class-action lawsuit won't receive any damages or any other payments in the settlement.

But attorneys representing Chrome users depicted the settlement as a victory for privacy.

The settlement also doesn't shield Google from more lawsuits revolving around the same issues covered in the class-action case. 

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That means individual consumers can still pursue damages against the company by filing their own civil complaints in state courts around the US.

Austin Chambers, a lawyer specialising in data privacy issues at the firm Dorsey & Whitney, described the settlement terms in the Chrome case as a "welcome development” that could affect the way personal information is collected online in the future.

"This prevents companies from profiting off of that data, and also requires them to undertake complex and costly data deletion efforts," Chambers said.

"In some cases, this could have a dramatic impact on products built around those datasets".

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   • Example: Brown, S. (2024, April 3). Google's privacy settlement over Chrome case: What you need to know. TechInsights.