Alphabet’s Google may be forced to pay an additional $2.36 billion following last month’s $425 million jury verdict in a high-profile consumer privacy lawsuit, after plaintiffs asked a U.S. federal judge to order the company to surrender profits allegedly earned through unlawful data collection.
In a filing Wednesday, lawyers representing millions of U.S. users told Chief U.S. District Judge Richard Seeborg in San Francisco that the extra amount represents a “conservative approximation” of Google’s gains from secretly collecting app activity data between 2012 and 2020. The lawsuit accused Google of tracking users’ activity even when they had disabled the Web & App Activity setting, violating privacy promises and consumer trust.
“The jury found that Google’s conduct was highly offensive, harmful, and without consent,” the plaintiffs said, arguing that the jury’s initial award was “clearly insufficient to remedy the ongoing and irreparable harm.”
Google has denied wrongdoing, maintaining that the data collected was anonymized and that users had control over their settings. The company said it plans to appeal the verdict, calling the claims exaggerated. It also filed a motion asking the court to decertify the class of 98 million users and 174 million devices, arguing that individual circumstances like app usage and privacy expectations vary widely.
The lawsuit, filed in 2020, originally sought more than $31 billion in damages. Although the jury found Google liable on two of three privacy claims, the company has not altered its data collection or disclosure practices since the ruling, according to plaintiffs.
If Judge Seeborg grants the disgorgement request, the case could become one of the largest financial penalties in U.S. privacy litigation history, underscoring the mounting pressure on tech giants over data use and transparency.
