By Newspot Nigeria Global Desk
📍 San Francisco, California — In a major win for Google, a U.S. federal judge has dismissed a proposed class action lawsuit that accused the tech giant of secretly collecting personal data from users of its Chrome browser—even when they opted not to sync it with their Google accounts.
On Monday, U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers ruled that the case could not proceed as a class action because individual user consent would need to be evaluated on a case-by-case basis. “Inquiries relating to Google’s implied consent defense will overwhelm the damages claims,” Judge Rogers noted in her decision.
The case—Calhoun et al v. Google LLC—alleged that Google misled millions of Chrome users by implying that personal information wouldn’t be collected unless they activated the “sync” feature. Plaintiffs pointed to Chrome’s own privacy notice stating that users “don’t need to provide any personal information to use Chrome.”
However, Google maintained that users were given clear privacy controls and transparency about data collection, even without syncing. Sandi Knight, Google’s VP of Litigation, praised the court’s decision, calling it a recognition of Chrome’s “clear privacy controls.”
The lawsuit is the latest in a string of legal battles over privacy involving the Alphabet-owned company. While this decision shuts down the current damages claims with prejudice—meaning they can’t be refiled—it does not affect other privacy-related lawsuits against Google currently underway.
Judge Rogers is overseeing at least two other privacy cases involving Google, but she clarified that those claims are “significantly different” from the ones dismissed in this suit.
Notably, this case follows a 2023 settlement where Google agreed to delete billions of data records from users who believed they were browsing privately in Chrome’s Incognito mode—another high-profile case that underscored growing legal scrutiny of big tech’s data practices.
For now, the ruling serves as a critical reminder of the challenges plaintiffs face when trying to hold tech companies accountable for privacy violations through sweeping class actions.
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