Google agrees to new privacy features in class action settlement

OAKLAND, Calif. (CN) — A federal judge granted final approval to a class action settlement in a case brought against Google over claims the technology giant illegally sells users’ personal information in auctions for ad space.

U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers opened a hearing Tuesday by indicating she would grant final approval of the settlement, while also reprimanding both parties for how they handled the case.

“Nothing in this case has ever been simple. It is hard for me to understand how plaintiffs in this action can argue this is a complete win. It is not. You sought a significant amount of damages, you lost on those fronts,” the Barack Obama appointee said.

“I’m not pleased with either side. I’m a broken record. You are not going to get all the money you are asking for, and you are going to pay more money than you wanted,” she added, speaking to each party’s attorneys.

The plaintiffs sued the company in 2021, accusing the company of having violated state and federal law by promising that it does not sell account holders’ personal information to third parties, while repeatedly selling the data through real-time bidding (RTB) auctions to advertisers.

The plaintiff Google account holders argued that Google solicits participants to bid on sending an ad to people, using data about each person in a bid request provided to the auction. This includes data that identifies people through device identifiers, geolocation and IP addresses, and highly detailed personal profile information about people’s interests, race, religion, sexual orientation and health.

The plaintiffs claim auction participants receive information about users and compete for space to send advertisements, with the winning bidder paying Google. Even participants who do not win or place a bid collect the personal data, the plaintiffs say.

The plaintiffs additionally claim that Google also allows “surveillance participants” who have no interest in filling an ad space but participate in auctions to get access to users’ personal information. They argue all of these practices earn revenue for Google and that the company does not disclose the auction practice or obtain consent from account holders.

The parties agreed to mediation in January 2025 and reached a settlement in May.

Class members for the case include “all individual Google account holders subject to a Google U.S. Terms of Service who have an active Google account” as of the court’s final approval order.

The settlement does not award class members monetary damages. Instead, Google agreed to create a new control that allows U.S. users to limit the information it shares with auction participants.

Once enabled, the “RTB control” will restrict the amount of personal information shared with auction participants, including encrypted Google user IDs and IP addresses, making it more difficult for auction participants to identify, target, or track users. Users will be able to activate the new control regardless of whether they are signed in or out of their Google account.

Elizabeth Pritzker of Pritzker Levine, an attorney for the plaintiffs, told the judge that the settlement “proposes sweeping business practice changes” that protect personal information from auction.

“What this settlement does is limit data flow to RTB,” she said. “It means personal, targeted, identifiable information will no longer be sold to third parties. It’s huge, enormous and never been done before.”

Google additionally agreed to send an email to all U.S. account holders with information about the RTB control, as well as create a webpage and additional disclosures on the new option.

Plaintiffs’ attorney Jonathan Levine of Pritzker Levine said the RTB will make any information sent to auction “non-personalized in a way that has never been done before,” and that the disclosures are the first time Google will be detailing its ad auction business.

“This is described as a sea change in how Google operates in ads,” he said.

Eligible users will be able to opt in and out of the option to limit the amount of their information shared for three years. After that period, Google can decide to continue offering the option or deviate from the agreement.

Levine said that the three-year injunctive period was standard for cases of this nature, given the rapid pace of technological change.

While the judge said she would approve the settlement, she chastised the parties for their fight over how much to award the plaintiffs in attorney’s fees.

The plaintiffs estimate the minimum economic value of the settlement to be $1.4 billion, while Google evaluates the agreement at a minimum of $740 million. Google asked the judge to award less attorneys’ fees to the plaintiffs because they were not successful in getting the relief they requested in their initial complaint.

“Injunctive relief is less than a percentage point for the class; they are delivering no damages, no monetary recovery to the class,” Whitty Somvichian of Cooley, an attorney for Google, said. “They went after two things and got one.”

The plaintiffs defended the settlement, arguing that their claims focused on changing the RTB auction practice, and that the agreement offers “real, meaningful protection” for users who will have control over whether their data is sold by Google or not.

“We achieved those litigation objectives through a lot of hard work and hard battle,” Pritzker said.

Gonzalez Rogers seemed skeptical of the plaintiffs’ claims of success and questioned them on why they agreed to an opt-out model that requires users to go in and manually turn off the control, versus an opt-in model, which would automatically apply to every user.

The judge further floated the idea of tying the plaintiff attorney’s payout to how successful they were at promoting the new opt-out option, a suggestion the plaintiffs strongly opposed.

“At this point, you guys want to get paid, but if it’s hidden, you get paid, they have business as usual, and yeah, maybe some people will take advantage,” Gonzalez Rogers said.

Despite her strong words for the plaintiffs, the judge placed equal blame on Google for making the case more difficult by stretching out litigation and causing attorney’s’ fees to increase dramatically.

“You’re not an easy defendant to fight against,” she told Google. “You fight against everything. Why should they be damaged because Google is a bottomless pit and willing to pay lawyers to fight?”

Gonzalez Rogers took the plaintiffs’ motion for attorney’s fees under submission and did not say when she would release a decision.

After the hearing, a Google spokesperson told Courthouse News that they are “pleased to put this case behind us.”

“We do not sell or share personal data, and we already have the strictest real-time bidding restrictions in the industry,” they said in an email statement.

A representative for the plaintiffs did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Follow @mhattridge_