After several years, Google finally closed last Thursday a class action lawsuit where they were accused of tracking user data while they were in Incognito Mode.
Initially, a judge in California scheduled the trial for next year, 2024. However, this agreement has put the trial on hold while all legal details are finalized.
In the original lawsuit, compensation ranging from 100 to 1,000 dollars per user was included, with millions of users involved. For Google, this would have meant paying billions of dollars in the event of losing the case (the amount could reach up to 5 billion dollars).
Incognito Mode under scrutiny
Who hasn’t used Google Chrome’s Incognito Mode at some point? This was (and still is) one of the browser’s functionalities, as it promised to not save information about the web pages you visited. At least, that was the theory. However, several internal emails from the company showed that Google did track its users in Incognito Mode.
At that time, Google tried to dismiss the lawsuit, but the judge in the case rejected it. According to the executive, user consent was not enough for the company to collect so much information about their online activity.
The plaintiffs alleged that Google used tools like Google Analytics and other applications to track users. It was also pointed out that by tracking users in Incognito Mode, the company generated a false sense of control over the data that users believed they were deciding to share.
Unfortunately, Google is not the only tech company accused of violating user privacy. Other giants, such as Amazon or Meta, have faced several lawsuits filed by federal regulators for not complying with various data protection laws.
