Google told to pay $425m in privacy lawsuit
"This decision misunderstands how our products work, and we will appeal it. Our privacy tools give people control over their data, and when they turn off personalisation, we honour that choice," a Google spokesperson told the BBC.
They had been seeking more than $31bn in damages.
The verdict comes after a group of users brought the case claiming Google accessed users' mobile devices to collect, save and use their data, in violation of privacy assurances in its Web & App Activity setting.
A US federal court has told Google to pay $425m (£316.3m) for breaching users' privacy by collecting data from millions of users even after they had turned off a tracking feature in their Google accounts.
The jury in the case found the internet search giant liable to two of three claims of privacy violations but said the firm had not acted with malice.
The class action lawsuit, covering about 98 million Google users and 174 million devices, was filed in July 2020.
The plaintiffs alleged that Google's collection practices extended to hundreds of thousands of smartphone apps, including those for ride-hailing companies Uber and Lyft, e-commerce giants Alibaba and Amazon, and Meta's social networks Instagram and Facebook.
Google says that when users turn off Web & App Activity in their account, businesses using Google Analytics may still collect data about their use of sites and apps but that this information does not identify individual users and respects their privacy choices.
Separately this week, shares in Google's parent company Alphabet jumped by more than 9% on Wednesday after a US federal judge ruled that it would not have to sell its Chrome web browser but must share information with competitors.
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