Business

Jury Finds Google Liable for Using Personal Data
By Reuters | 03 Sep, 2025

A federal jury found Google liable for $425 million in damages for continuing to use personal data after users had turned off tracking.

People walk next to a Google logo during a trade fair in Hannover Messe, in Hanover, Germany, April 22, 2024. REUTERS/Annegret Hilse/File Photo

A federal jury determined on Wednesday that Alphabet's Google must pay $425 million in a class action lawsuit that accused it of continuing to collect data for millions of users who had switched off a tracking feature in their Google account, a spokesperson for the plaintiffs' lawyer said. 

The verdict comes after a trial in the federal court in San Francisco over allegations that Google over an eight-year period accessed users' mobile devices to collect, save, and use their data, violating privacy representations under its Web & App Activity setting . The consumers had been seeking more than $31 billion in damages.

The class action, filed in July 2020, claimed that Google continued to collect users' data even with the setting turned off through its relationship with apps such as Uber, Venmo and Meta's Instagram that use certain Google analytics services.

A spokesperson for Google confirmed the verdict. 

(Reporting by Deborah Sophia in Bengaluru, Luc Cohen in New York and Kenrick Cai in San Francisco; Editing by David Bario)