Google has agreed to delete billions of users’ browsing history records as part of a lawsuit alleging the tech giant tracked people without their consent. The lawsuit accused Google of gathering data from users who thought they were browsing the internet privately in the company’s Chrome “Incognito” mode.
In a statement to CNN on Monday, David Boies, the lawyer for the consumer plaintiffs, described the settlement as “a historic step in requiring honesty and accountability from dominant technology companies.”
“Moreover, the settlement requires Google to delete and remediate, in unprecedented scope and scale, the data it improperly collected in the past,” Boies added.
José Castañeda, a Google spokesperson, told CNN that the company is “pleased to settle this lawsuit, which we always believed was meritless.”
Google settled the lawsuit in December and the terms were disclosed for the first time in a filing on Monday, April 1. As part of the settlement, Google will also update its disclosures to inform users about the data it collects in private browsing mode.
Google maintains it does not associate data with users in Incognito mode. No users will receive damages from this settlement, but they retain the right to sue individually for damages.
