Google faces $440m privacy judgment over unlawful 'Paused' app tracking as class counsel files for fees - ITREALMS

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Tech giant Google is currently battling to overturn a massive legal judgment in the United States after a federal jury found the company unlawfully tracked users who had explicitly deactivated their activity tracking, reports ITREALMS.

The class-action lawsuit, filed in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California under the case name Rodriguez v. Google, culminated in a landmark verdict where the jury awarded more than $425 million in damages to two certified classes of mobile device users. 

With interest steadily accumulating, the total judgment against Google reached $440,345,685.40 as of March 2, 2026, and continues to rise while the tech firm attempts to have the ruling thrown out.

The legal dispute centers on allegations that Google bypassed its own user-controlled privacy settings, specifically the "Web & App Activity" control and its "supplemental Web & App Activity" sub-setting, which governs Chrome history and data sharing from third-party apps using Google services. 

Three individual Google account holders filed the class action, asserting that even when these settings were turned off or paused, Google continued to access their devices. 

The plaintiffs argued that Google utilized proprietary software code embedded in non-Google apps, such as the Firebase Software Development Kit (SDK) and the Google Mobile Ads SDK, to systematically collect, store, and use data regarding user activities on those external applications. While the jury cleared Google of violating California’s Comprehensive Computer Data Access and Fraud Act, it found the company liable on claims of invasion of privacy and intrusion upon seclusion.

The certified class of affected users has been divided into two groups based on their device operating systems during the period from July 1, 2016, through September 23, 2024. 

The first group, known as the Android Class, consists of non-enterprise and non-supervised individual users whose third-party app activity was transmitted to Google from Android devices. 

The jury awarded this class a sum of $247,154,157 in damages. The second group, the Non-Android Class, covers individuals using non-Android operating systems whose data was similarly intercepted, resulting in an award of $178,497,790. 

Google faces $440m privacy judgment over unlawful 'Paused' app tracking as class counsel files for fees - ITREALMS

Notably, the lawsuit excludes corporate enterprise accounts and parental-supervised "Unicorn" accounts for children under thirteen, unless those individuals held separate personal Google accounts that met the class criteria.

Despite the historic jury verdict, no monetary payouts are immediately available to class members. Google has filed a motion asking the Court to vacate the judgment entirely, effectively requesting that the jury’s verdict be disregarded, and the company is expected to mount a formal appeal if that motion fails. 

As the protracted legal battle moves to its next phase, the Court has authorized a formal notice to class members regarding the upcoming "Fee Application" submitted by the plaintiffs’ attorneys. Under court rules, Class Counsel must formally request compensation for their work, even while the finality of the payout remains subject to Google's post-trial challenges and appeals.

According to the official court notice, the legal teams representing the class members are requesting a 33 percent share of the final judgment, which includes both the initial damages and the accruing interest. 

In addition to the one-third attorney fee, Class Counsel is seeking $12,422,374.42 to cover accumulated litigation costs and expenses, alongside a total of $135,000.00 in service awards to be split among the three class representatives who drove the lawsuit forward. 

These combined expenses will be deducted from any final compensation pool eventually paid out by Google. Affected class members who wish to voice objections to the proposed attorney fees, expenses, or representative service awards have been given a deadline of July 30, 2026, to file written objections with the federal court clerk in San Francisco, after which the presiding judge will make a final determination on the counsel's compensation.