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Judge Rejects Multibillion-Dollar Penalty Request in Google Privacy Case

By  |  February 1, 2026

A federal judge in San Francisco on Friday turned away an effort by consumers to impose more than $2 billion in additional penalties on Alphabet’s Google over how it handled user data after people disabled a key privacy control.

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    Chief U.S. District Judge Richard Seeborg ruled that the plaintiffs were not entitled to the $2.36 billion they sought in alleged profits and also declined to order changes to Google’s advertising-related data practices, according to a statement describing the decision. The request came after a jury last September found the company liable for collecting app activity information from users who had switched off a tracking feature.

    The jury had already awarded roughly $425 million in damages to the class action, far less than the $31 billion the consumers had requested, and it issued an advisory finding that taking away Google’s profits was not justified, per a statement summarizing the trial outcome. Seeborg said on Friday that the plaintiffs had not demonstrated the kind of “prospective, irreparable harm” that would warrant a permanent injunction, and that their estimate of Google’s profits was “insufficiently supported,” according to a statement of the ruling.

    Google had asked the court not to add any extra punishment to the jury’s verdict and also sought to break up the class of about 98 million users covering 174 million devices. Seeborg rejected the attempt to decertify the class, per a statement from the court record, keeping the group intact even as he declined to impose new penalties.

    Read more: Google to Settle Claims of Improper Voice Data Collection for $68 Million

    The consumers argued that they should receive what they described as Google’s ill-gotten gains from the data tracking, saying the company had not updated its privacy disclosures or collection practices despite the verdict. Google countered that a court order limiting its ability to gather account-related data would “cripple” an analytics service used by millions of app developers, according to a statement made in court filings.

    Google did not immediately respond to a request for comment. David Boies, a lead lawyer for the consumers, said he welcomed the judge’s confirmation of the jury’s damages award, per a statement provided by his legal team. At the same time, Google has denied wrongdoing and has said it plans to appeal the September verdict, according to a statement outlining the company’s position.

    The case, filed as Rodriguez v. Google LLC in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, continues to draw attention as both sides prepare for the next phase of litigation following Friday’s decision.

    Source: Reuters