Court of Appeals Allows Class Action Suit Against Google to Go Forward
A U.S. appellate court has ruled that Google must face a reinstated lawsuit from Google Chrome users who allege the company collected their personal data without consent, despite their decision not to sync their browsers with their Google accounts. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco stated that the judge in the lower court, who initially dismissed the proposed class action, should have considered whether typical Chrome users would reasonably have agreed to Google collecting their data while browsing.
This 3-0 decision on Tuesday came after Google agreed last year to delete billions of records to settle a separate lawsuit claiming it tracked users who believed they were browsing privately, including in Chrome’s “Incognito” mode. Google responded to the ruling by stating, “We disagree with this ruling and are confident the facts of the case are on our side. Chrome Sync helps people use Chrome seamlessly across their devices and has clear privacy controls.”
Matthew Wessler, attorney for the plaintiffs, expressed satisfaction with the court’s decision and anticipates a trial. The proposed class covers Chrome users since July 27, 2016, who did not sync their browsers with their Google accounts, asserting that Google should have honored Chrome’s privacy notice, which claimed users “don’t need to provide any personal information to use Chrome,” and that such information wouldn’t be collected unless the “sync” function was enabled.
The lower court had previously ruled that Google’s general privacy policy permitting data collection applied in this case, reasoning that the company would have gathered the plaintiffs’ information regardless of the browser used. Circuit Judge Milan Smith, however, deemed this reasoning flawed, writing, “Google had a general privacy disclosure yet promoted Chrome by suggesting that certain information would not be sent to Google unless a user turned on sync. A reasonable user would not necessarily understand that they were consenting to the data collection at issue.”
The appeals court has now returned the case to U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers in Oakland, California, who had dismissed it in December 2022. Google’s previous settlement concerning Incognito mode allows users to individually sue the company for damages, with tens of thousands of California users already doing so in state courts.
The case is Calhoun et al v. Google LLC, 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, No. 22-16993.
