A lawsuit against Google following the “incognito mode” of Chrome users will continue after Google’s federal judge rejected the motion on Friday. The class action lawsuit Brown V. Google was filed in June 2020, alleging that the plaintiffs’ data was collected and retrieved from June 2016 until the filing date without permission or “legitimate business interest” while using the private browsing tool, according to Business Insider.
Google is asking for redundancies based on informing users about the way their data is used, even in “incognito mode”. The company’s lawyers explained in their motion: ‘Google also makes clear that’ Incognito ‘does not mean’ invisible ‘, and that the user’s activity during the session may be visible to sites they visit, and any third party analytics or advertising services that use the visited sites. ”
In recent years, U.S. federal courts have cracked down on the way technology giants track, collect, and implement user data, as well as monopolistic or competitive behavior. In October 2020, a lawsuit was filed against Google and the Federal Trade Commission ordered nine of these companies to explain how and why they collect personal information in December. Google, along with Amazon, Facebook, Apple, Microsoft, Twitter and Uber, spent a combined cost of $ 65 million over the course of 2020 in combating these and other attempted regulatory and antitrust lawsuits.
But Google has introduced some self-regulatory measures. The company recently announced that it will phase out the use of third-party cookies, which help deliver targeted ads, in Chrome, citing an “erosion of trust” for its users.