Google Can't Defend Shady Chrome Data Hoarding As 'Browser Agnostic,' Court Says

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Chrome users who declined to sync their Google accounts with their browsing data secured a big privacy win this week after previously losing a proposed class action claiming that Google secretly collected personal data without consent from over 100 million Chrome users who opted out of syncing. On Tuesday, the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals reversed (PDF) the prior court's finding that Google had properly gained consent for the contested data collection. The appeals court said that the US district court had erred in ruling that Google's general privacy policies secured consent for the data collection. The district court failed to consider conflicts with Google's Chrome Privacy Notice (CPN), which said that users' "choice not to sync Chrome with their Google accounts meant that certain personal information would not be collected and used by Google," the appeals court ruled.

Rather than analyzing the CPN, it appears that the US district court completely bought into Google's argument that the CPN didn't apply because the data collection at issue was "browser agnostic" and occurred whether a user was browsing with Chrome or not. But the appeals court -- by a 3-0 vote -- did not. In his opinion, Circuit Judge Milan Smith wrote that the "district court should have reviewed the terms of Google's various disclosures and decided whether a reasonable user reading them would think that he or she was consenting to the data collection." "By focusing on 'browser agnosticism' instead of conducting the reasonable person inquiry, the district court failed to apply the correct standard," Smith wrote. "Viewed in the light most favorable to Plaintiffs, browser agnosticism is irrelevant because nothing in Google's disclosures is tied to what other browsers do."

Smith seemed to suggest that the US district court wasted time holding a "7.5-hour evidentiary hearing which included expert testimony about 'whether the data collection at issue'" was "browser-agnostic." "Rather than trying to determine how a reasonable user would understand Google's various privacy policies," the district court improperly "made the case turn on a technical distinction unfamiliar to most 'reasonable'" users, Smith wrote. Now, the case has been remanded to the district court where Google will face a trial over the alleged failure to get consent for the data collection. If the class action is certified, Google risks owing currently unknown damages to any Chrome users who opted out of syncing between 2016 and 2024. According to Smith, the key focus of the trial will be weighing the CPN terms and determining "what a 'reasonable user' of a service would understand they were consenting to, not what a technical expert would."

What would a reasonable person think of a abuser?

[Murdoch5]

I guess the question of reasonable user depends on how people view Google. If I use my mother, she would probably not have any idea or care. If I use my grandmothers, they would blame the computer for being silly and for the youngsters. Taking my father as an example, or my uncles, they would call out Google for being a violation first platform, and assume even if you say no, it's opposite day, unless you say yes.

Can you really find a user who knows enough, and at the same time would say: "Oh Google! T

Re:

[Sique]

Luckily, you don't need to solve the conundrum for yourself, because 'reasonable person' is a term that is handled extensively in the juridical education, and is part of the examination.

No need for a layperson to ponder about the different aspects you can come up with.

Re:

[Murdoch5]

Except you do have to consider multiple avenues, any reasonable person is going to understand Google as a company that violates privacy like it's a contest. When people try to extract the context it almost never works, for instance if a reasonable person is found to have tons of porn magazines, they can't claim they didn't know it was porn. In the same way, if you buy a peanut butter cookie, and you're allergic to nuts, you can't claim to didn't know if you go into anaphylaxis.

The reasonable fictional

Re:

[pavon]

It has nothing to do with a what reasonable person would expect or want or think of Google in general. It is about how a reasonable person would interpret the contract (terms of service and privacy policy) that Google made people agree to when they installed Chrome.

Re:

[Murdoch5]

I made that argument to someone else, it's a contract issue, that's all. It has nothing to do with a "reasonable person", it's just a simple case, the contract was either unclear or intentionally wrong, and hence the Google is on the hook.

how many times?

[usedtobestine]

I'm sure I have opted out every time I have had to install chrome.
Does that mean they owe me the payout times the number of machines I used chrome on during that time frame?

Re:

[RossCWilliams]

You have to opt out every time. You only need to opt in once.

Re:

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Browser agnostic my hiney

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

Chromium in one form or another is 80% of the browser marketshare.

Browser agnostic is an argument that's only valid if Google's own stuff didn't dominate the market completely. It's like saying the height of the lawn in the neighborhood impacts all the neighbors equally when 8 out of 10 houses belong to you.

Re:

[preflex]

It works on all the major browsers, except Gecko-based browsers.

We Look the other Way for Other Browsers

[BrendaEM]

I hate google, but Windows is putting data into Edge's cache for something or another. Firefox AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\xxxx.default-release\datareporting\archived keeps building up.

WTF Happened to “Do No Evil”?

[erasmix]

Nothing stands in the way of profits!