SAN FRANCISCO/PARIS: Alphabet’s Google was told by a federal jury in the US on Wednesday to pay $425 million for invading users’ privacy and slapped with a fine of 325 million euros ($381 million) in France for a similar offense.
The jury found the tech giant of guilty of violations by continuing to collect data for millions of users who had switched off a tracking feature in their Google account.
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 assurances under its Web & App Activity setting.
The users had been seeking more than $31 billion in damages.
The jury found Google liable on two of the three claims of privacy violations brought by the plaintiffs. The jury found that Google had not acted with malice, meaning it was not entitled to any punitive damages.
