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The Courts Google

You're Owed a Little Money From a 2010 Google Class Action Lawsuit (yakimaherald.com) 57

Posted by EditorDavid from the I'm-feeling-lucky dept.
An anonymous reader shared this report from The Penny Hoarder: If you Googled anything between 2006 and 2013, then Google owes you money for violating your privacy. Those are the terms of a class-action lawsuit that Google has settled for $23 million.

How much money does Google owe you? Well, it depends on how many people come forward to claim their share of the settlement. The current estimated payout is about $7.70 per person.

Of course, that number could go up or down before it's all over. If fewer people than expected file claims, the payout amount will go up. But if more people than expected file claims, the payout amount will go down because more people are sharing the settlement money... The deadline to file a claim is July 31...

Basically, the class-action lawsuit alleges that Google Search "improperly shared your search queries with third-party websites and companies" during the time period in question. This has to do with how Google allegedly included your search query in the link that's created whenever you click on a website in a Google search. This involves something called a "referrer header."

Even though Google settled the case, it still denies any wrongdoing or liability. As part of the lawsuit settlement, Google is updating its FAQ page.
Some interesting history from SFGate: The lawsuit was filed in 2010 over allegations that Google shared its users' search terms with third-party websites based on its use of referrer headers, which essentially shows websites how a user found them. In 2015, the case reached an $8.5 million settlement in the Northern District of California, with a vast majority of the settlement going to a collection of internet privacy groups, because the amount allocated for each individual would have been mere pennies. But the case was brought all the way up to the Supreme Court after Ted Frank, a conservative activist and vocal class action suit critic, disputed the settlement being sent to those nonprofit groups instead of the users affected by the suit. In 2019, the case made its way back down to the district court, where the preliminary settlement was approved in 2022...

The final approval hearing for the settlement, which includes whether the class action representatives will receive $5,000 and the representing attorneys will receive 25% of the $23 million sum, is scheduled for Oct. 12.
From the Settlement agreement: If the Settlement becomes final, Settlement Class Members will be releasing Google (and certain others related to Google, such as Google directors, officers and employees) from all of the settled claims. This means that you will no longer be able to sue Google (or the other released parties) regarding any of the settled claims if you are a Settlement Class Member and do not timely and properly exclude yourself from the Settlement Class...


YOUR LEGAL RIGHTS AND OPTIONS IN THIS SETTLEMENT:

FILE A CLAIM BY JULY 31, 2023
This is the only way to get a payment under the Settlement.

DO NOTHING
Get no payment under the Settlement and give up your right to compensation for the claims and allegations in this case.

EXCLUDE YOURSELF BY JULY 31, 2023
Get no payment under the Settlement. This is the only option that allows you to be a part of any other lawsuit against Google about the claims and allegations in this case.

OBJECT BY JULY 31, 2023
Write to the Court about why you think the Settlement should not be approved. You may also ask to speak in Court about the fairness of the Settlement.
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You're Owed a Little Money From a 2010 Google Class Action Lawsuit More

You're Owed a Little Money From a 2010 Google Class Action Lawsuit

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  • Capitalism (Score:5, Insightful)

    by kmoser ( 1469707 ) on Saturday June 17, 2023 @01:36PM (#63610626)
    Only in a capitalist society does the amount you are owed for being wronged depend on how many other people were wronged. In a just world, it would be a fixed amount per user as determined by the courts.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Z00L00K ( 682162 )

      I somewhat agree here, but I think that even more important would be to demand that no user tracking should occur at all for that same period (7 years). That should be a fitting punishment.

    • In a just world, people might need no money to begin with ;-)

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      Indeed. And with some added prison time for the C-level that signed off on it.

    • Unfair court rulings like this can happen with equal frequency in a communist society. There is absolutely nothing about private ownership of the means of production which forces court settlements to be unfair.

    • If Google acted illegally why is their punishment a dollar amount? If I sold PII illegally you can bet the US legal system would do more than just fine me.

      • Well, how many people are out protesting this ruling on the capital lawn? How many people are writing to their congress reps demanding that better regulatory laws be passed? How many people are taking the last option given in the summary and writing to the court that they object to the ruling?

        How many people are even bothering to use alternatives to Google's services?

        Answer: no-damn-body.

        We won't get justice if we don't fight for it. And we aren't even bothering to politely ask for it. Hell, barely anyo

      • This ruling is from a civil case. In other words, the suit was brought by an individual. This type of case alleges crime against individuals, not crime against the state. It could also be a crime against the state, but the rules for that (a criminal case, tried in criminal court) are completely different.

        So my fuzzy understanding is that there are two related reasons why jail time is not on the table: the state did not prosecute this case itself, and Google did not have all the same rights/protections they

    • This is just the payout if you choose to take your part in the class action suit. You are free to sue them yourself, as per the summary (and every other class action case)

  • The lawyers get the big money of course (Score:4)

    by LindleyF ( 9395567 ) on Saturday June 17, 2023 @01:45PM (#63610656)
    The rest is kind of irrelevant. Legal system in a nutshell.

    • That's because the USA has chosen not to regulate the behavior of businesses, for the most part.
      We could have regulatory agencies checking on their behavior and handing out punishments for violations, but instead it's up to hungry lawyers to bring lawsuits on behalf of the victims.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by kmoser ( 1469707 )
      In a just world, lawyers' fees would be in addition to the fine, not paid from the fine.

    • Re:The lawyers get the big money of course (Score:5, Informative)

      by tlhIngan ( 30335 ) <[ten.frow] [ta] [todhsals]> on Saturday June 17, 2023 @07:04PM (#63611380)

      The rest is kind of irrelevant. Legal system in a nutshell.

      You're free to opt-out and fight the lawsuit on your own. Then you can keep whatever you can win minus your attorney's fees.

      Class actions seem stupid, but they take into account that stealing a small amount from millions of people is far better than stealing a large amount from a small number of people.

      Think of it this way - I need a million dollars. I can steal $1 from a million people, or $1,000,000 from 1 person. Which is likely the better way? The latter means that 1 person will likely take me to court and fight it out. The former means almost no one will bother. Yet I still get my million dollars.

      And business knows this.

      That's why there's class actions - they allow you to gather all the victims together and do one big legal action rather than many small ones, because if you've been harmed for $1, you aren't going to involve the legal system. But if you can get a million of those people together, suddenly things get more interesting.

      Otherwise you'll have business getting away with lots of little things. Oh, you signed a contract for 2 years of cellphone service at $50 a month? Well, suck it up, we're jacking it up to $55 a month. Don't like it? Sue us. Cancel? Pay the $120 cancellation fee. ($5/month over 24 months is $120 - even small claims will likely cost more than that between filing fees and taking time off work). It'll be death by a million papercuts.

      Class actions aren't money makers for lawyers - it's all done on contingency, and it can involve dozens of people costing thousands per hour if you were engage the law firm normally. All of this work is done at risk - if the courts toss the class action, all that work is thrown away. So the lawyers get paid generously because well, it's gamble for them. And the courts have a say in the settlement - the lawyers might not get as much as they hoped for so they may not get a windfall either - just what they would've billed out normally. So it's got to compensate for the risk in losing millions of dollars, pay for previous losses and cover expenses for the current suit.

  • Let someone else have my measly sum split however many ways.

  • or not, there are a few things you can be sure of with Google:

    - They have reoffended since 2010, and will do it again. In fact, they never stopped.
    - They may or may not be sued again, lose in court again and be ordered to pay chump change again, and they won't give a rat's ass and the violations will continue unabashed.
    - If the ever promise not to reoffend, or if they're ordered never to reoffend, nobody will ever verify that they comply and they'll reoffend.

    • If some corporation does it, that is. You know what this escalates to in the EU if they do not stop? Prohibition on processing personal data. It has happened to some re-offenders. At that point, you are not even allowed to handle your own HR data.

      • At that point, you are not even allowed to handle your own HR data.

        Ah. Does that explain (in part) the hard-on that corporate life has for AI?

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by gweihir ( 88907 )

          I do not follow. What do you mean?

          • If you don't have humans on your staff, you don't need an HR department.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by gweihir ( 88907 )

              You mean not even C-levels or board members? I think, stupid as they usually are, they would notice that little issue with their own job safety.

              • In English (you might be typing American), "A-levels" is an euphemism for anal sex, "B-levels" are a bit lower than A-levels, and I don't know what "C-levels" are. Possibly the (alleged) Chinese (Oing / Manchu) practice of using the (unbound) bound feet of a woman as a sexual orifice. Something lower than foot-sex with a damaged woman maintained as a sex-slave?

                (For companies with more than IIRC 25 employees ...) Board members may be employees, but at least several of them must not be employees, or receive

    • So why not de-google your life?

      Duck Duck Go [duckduckgo.com] works fine.

      Even if you must use google, don't sign in. Nix those accounts and use alternatives. Paid email is dirt cheap and doesn't cancel your life because its algorithms glitched and decided you violated the TOS (and if problems DO happen, they actually let you talk to a human being, unlike google).

      Seriously, Google is a bunch of bullies. The tiny convenience they offer over the alternatives is simply not worth all the spying and the ever-present threat of c

    • You'd be surprised how many hoops Google jumps through to comply with these things.

    • The thing is, this is a settlement of a class action lawsuit, not a guilty verdict against Google. In fact, under the terms of the settlement, Google specifically declines to admit to wrongdoing of any kind, and there is NO legal "verdict" against it.

      This is "go-away" money, nothing more. The only reason it requires a court to approve it is that, under the original settlement - which an anti-class-action plaintiff successfully sued to void - Google would have had to pay only $7 million, split between the pl

      • Once again, Google has NOT admitted any wrongdoing in this case

        Since when does legal nonsense has been so thoroughly internalized by people?

        I don't need a judge or a court-issued verdict to know that ALL settlements made by parties with enough funds to see a court case to the end is an admisttion of guilt. Why would they pay if they were innocent and they had enough money to pay the best attorneys to prove it?

        When a company with pockets as deep as Google's settles, it's guilty like a puppy sitting next to a pile of poo. It's blindingly obvious to anyone with common sen

  • Neither TFA nor TFS seems to explain this. What did Google do that was above and beyond the normal behavior of the referrer header?

    • From one of the PDFs on the website, here is the content of the complaint (and good grief, there were SO MANY pages of legal mumbo-jumbo ahead of this...)

      1. Plaintiffs bring this class action complaint against Google Inc. (“Google”) for storing and intentionally, systematically and repeatedly divulging its users’ search queries and histories to third parties via “Referrer Headers.” This practice adversely impacts billions of searches conducted by millions of consumers.
      2. Google

  • Are there actually enough people who buy this shit that it's worth putting out the propaganda?

    It's lawyers pocketing money for themselves. I could go either way on whether the system gets abused too much to be worth it for the few cases where it serves to protect actual rights from actual abuses (or deters abuses).

    But this case is clearly bullshit.

  • To collect ... (Score:3)

    by fahrbot-bot ( 874524 ) on Saturday June 17, 2023 @02:07PM (#63610714)

    Please register your personal and contact information with the third party handling the case ...

  • for egregious violations of privacy.

  • "Do No Evil", my ass.

  • *ANY* Google user, or ... (Score:3)

    by RockDoctor ( 15477 ) on Saturday June 17, 2023 @04:21PM (#63611080) Journal
    ANY Google User in America?

    It's a rather important detail to the (approx) 3/4 of the computing world outside America.

    I'd submit my claim. Because the sheer cost of processing a claim to a claimant abroad will be far higher than the face value. It's done, as the saying goes, with malice aforethought.

    Alternatively, are there continuing suits for restitution in the rest of the world (in which case, Google Inc has considerably larger fines coming it's way.

  • The only winners in that class actions are lawyers.

  • I think you can turn it off with the following in mozilla about:config
    network.http.referer.trimmingPolicy
    network.http.referer.XOriginPolicy
    network.http.referer.XOriginTrimmingPolicy
    Some sites don't work though, sometimes affects logging in as well.
    Or you can copy and paste the url into the location bar.

  • In order to join the suit, you have to fill in a form which includes your full name, address, and email. We should check with Alanis Morissette to see if that's ironic.
    • The settlement site has an embedded script in every page from googletagmanager.com and it requires a Goolge reCAPTCHA (thus scripts from both google.com and gstatic.com) just to login after registration.

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