By Mike Scarcella
Jan 30 (Reuters) – Alphabet’s Google persuaded a federal judge in San Francisco on Friday to reject a bid by consumers for more than $2 billion in penalties over the company’s past collection of data from users who had switched off a key privacy setting.
Chief U.S. District Judge Richard Seeborg denied the request to order Google to disgorge $2.36 billion in alleged profits and to stop certain ad-related data practices.
Google had urged Seeborg not to add the penalty to a jury’s verdict in September that found the company liable for secretly collecting app activity data from millions of users who had disabled a tracking feature.
The jury in September awarded about $425 million in damages to the class action plaintiffs — far below the $31 billion they sought — and issued an advisory verdict that disgorgement was unwarranted.
Google did not immediately respond to a request for comment. David Boies, a lead attorney for the consumers, said they were thankful Seeborg’s ruling confirmed the jury’s verdict.
Google has denied any wrongdoing and said it will appeal the September verdict. Seeborg on Friday rejected Google’s request to decertify the class of 98 million users and 174 million devices.
In their request for disgorgement, the plaintiffs said they were entitled to Google’s allegedly ill-gotten gains from its data tracking. Despite the verdict, Google has not changed its privacy disclosures or data collection practices, the plaintiffs said.
Google countered that an order blocking it from collecting users’ account-related data would “cripple” an analytics service relied on by millions of app developers.
Seeborg ruled that the plaintiffs failed to show any “prospective, irreparable harm” that would justify a permanent injunction barring Google’s data collection practices. The judge said the consumers had not shown an entitlement to disgorgement, and also that their estimate of Google’s profits was “insufficiently supported.”
The case is Rodriguez v. Google LLC, U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, No. 3:20-cv-04688.
For plaintiffs: David Boies and Mark Mao of Boies Schiller Flexner; Bill Carmody and Shawn Rabin of Susman Godfrey; and John Yanchunis and Ryan McGee of Morgan & Morgan
For Google: Michael Attanasio, Benedict Hur and Simona Agnolucci of Cooley
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(Reporting by Mike Scarcella in Washington)
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