Consumers who won a $425 million jury verdict in a privacy class action against Google are reportedly now seeking an additional $2.36 billion from the tech giant.
In a Wednesday (Oct. 22) court filing, the consumers said the $425 million in damages was “clearly insufficient” to remedy the harm caused by Google’s conduct and that the additional $2.36 billion is a “conservative approximation” of the company’s ill-gotten gains, Reuters reported Thursday (Oct. 23).
Referring to the verdict in which the jury found that Google secretly collected app activity data from users who had disabled account tracking, the consumers said Wednesday that the jury “found that Google’s conduct was highly offensive, harmful, and without consent.”
The plaintiffs had sought more than $31 billion in damages during the trial, according to the report.
Google has denied wrongdoing and said it will appeal the verdict, the report said.
On Wednesday, the company asked the judge to decertify the class, saying that the claims depend on app usage, user expectations and other individualized factors, per the report.
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When the verdict in the privacy class action was announced in September, it was reported that the jury awarded $425 million rather than $31 billion in damages because it concluded that Google had not acted with malice and therefore did not have to pay punitive damages.
The case began in July 2020 and covered nearly 98 million Google users and more than 170 million devices.
The plaintiffs argued that Google continued gathering data through its ties with third-party apps that use Google analytics services.
Google countered that the data collected was pseudonymous, nonpersonal and stored securely in encrypted systems. The company maintained that the information was not linked to user identities or Google accounts.
At the end of the jury trial, an attorney for the plaintiffs, David Boies, said his clients were “obviously very pleased with the verdict the jury returned.”
Google announced its plans to appeal. Company spokesperson Jose Castaneda said at the time: “This decision misunderstands how our products work. Our privacy tools give people control over their data, and when they turn off personalization, we honor that choice.”
