Currently, Google is facing several lawsuits around the world, which makes it impossible to keep track of all of them.
The Department of Justice presented one in 2020 and another soon. In has at least two; Arizona recently agreed to an $85 million settlement with the search giant. And they also have demands.
It’s not just governments. Video game maker Epic and dating app owner Match Group are claiming anti-competitive behavior in the way it runs its app store. He is suing Google for sending politicians’ emails directly to spam folders.
Here’s another one to add to the list. On October 25, a California judge was deliberating whether to allow a class action lawsuit representing millions of Google users to proceed. A consumer group alleges that the company misled people about the data it collected when they used private browsing modes in both Google’s Chrome web browser and browsers made by other companies like Apple and Mozilla.
The lawyers leading the lawsuit have already amassed a slew of internal Google emails that they say show how company executives have known for years that what the company calls “incognito mode” is anything but incognito. Private browsing modes generally block tracking cookies, small pieces of code that follow people across the Internet by recording their activity.
But Google still recorded information about people using private mode whenever they visited websites that had installed popular Google software used to serve ads or measure traffic, the lawsuit alleges.
Emails released as part of the court case show how Google employees repeatedly raised concerns about private mode with their superiors.
A 2019 email from Google chief marketing officer Lorraine Twohill to CEO Sundar Pichai said incognito mode was “not truly private.” An internal filing said Google users “overestimate the protections Incognito offers.” Another proposed getting rid of the word “private” from the incognito mode home screen altogether.
