Google privacy lawsuit keeps haunting the tech giant

Google privacy lawsuit just keeps coming back to haunt the Mountain View tech giant. A judge previously dismissed a lawsuit against the company for allegedly collecting Chrome users’ data without consent, but now, an appeals court has revived it for further consideration.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has decided that Google must face a trial for allegedly misleading users about data collection on its Chrome browser, reversing a previous dismissal of the lawsuit.

The court found that the lower court had erred in dismissing the case, as it had not properly considered whether Chrome users reasonably believed their data would be protected.

“The panel explained that the district court should have reviewed the terms of Google’s various disclosures and decided whether a reasonable usre reading them would think that he or she was consenting to the data collection,” the document reads.

Google, which recently settled a related privacy lawsuit involving Incognito mode by agreeing to delete billions of records, disputes the ruling and maintains that Chrome’s privacy controls are clear. So much so that the company has even done a few other measures, like updating the Incognito mode description and letting users choose their default browser & search engine.

Chrome users claimed that their data was collected without consent when they chose not to sync their browsers with their Google accounts. The case, covering users since July 2016, will now return to a lower court for further proceedings.

“By focusing on “browser agnosticism” instead of conducting the reasonable person inquiry, the district court failed to apply the correct standard,” the court states further.