Bad news keeps rolling: US court revives Google privacy class action lawsuit

A trio of federal judges has delivered another round of bad news to Google. They said the tech giant must face a class action lawsuit alleging it misled some Chrome users into thinking it wasn’t collecting data on their activity.

The users claim that Google collected their personal information after they chose not to synchronize their browsers with their Google accounts.

In 2022, a federal district court threw out the lawsuit (PDF). However, the US Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit in San Francisco has now struck down that particular ruling, saying that the lower court didn’t take into account whether “reasonable” people would have understood their data was being collected by Google’s Chrome browser when they chose not to activate the syncing feature.

“The district court should have reviewed the terms of Google’s various disclosures and decided whether a reasonable user reading them would think that he or she was consenting to the data collection,” said the panel.

The plaintiffs – the users – said Google should have honored Chrome's privacy notice, which said users “don't need to provide any personal information to use Chrome” and Google would not receive such information unless they turned on the “sync” function.

The feature saves passwords, bookmarks, open tabs, and other data to your Google account, giving users easy access to this information when signed into Chrome on multiple devices.

In a statement, Google said, “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 different devices and has clear privacy controls.”

However, Circuit Judge Milan Smith pointed out in Tuesday’s decision that “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,” said Smith.

Tuesday's 3-0 decision followed Google's agreement last year to destroy billions of records to settle a lawsuit claiming it tracked people who thought they were browsing privately, including in Chrome's “Incognito” mode. The lawsuit had sought at least $5 billion.

The ruling adds to Google's legal defeats. Last December, the corporation agreed to pay $700 million and allow greater competition in its Play app store, according to the terms of an antitrust settlement with US states and consumers.

And at the beginning of August, a US federal district judge dealt another blow to Google, finding the tech behemoth guilty of violating antitrust laws and acting like a monopolist.