Google has vowed to delete billions of Chrome Incognito mode data records after facing a lawsuit.
The tech giant was in court as a class action settlement was filed on April 1. Though it will not have to pay any damages, those people whose data was recorded — despite being in a private browsing mode — have the right to sue the company individually after it violated California’s privacy law.
“We are pleased to settle this lawsuit, which we always believed was meritless,” Google spokesperson José Castañeda said of the outcome.
“We are happy to delete old technical data that was never associated with an individual and was never used for any form of personalization,” he added.
For the next five years, Incognito mode will block third-party cookies automatically.
Meanwhile, the EU announced last month it is investigating Apple’s, Meta’s and Google’s compliance with the Digital Markets Act.
Suppose the Big Tech companies are found to have breached the regulation that aims to make the digital economy fairer and more contestable. In that case, they will have to pay hefty fines that could total up to 10 percent of their annual turnover.
“We suspect that the suggested solutions put forward by the three companies do not fully comply with the DMA,” EU antitrust boss Margrethe Vestager said at a press conference in Brussels, Belgium on March 25.
“We will now investigate the companies’ compliance with the DMA, to ensure open and contestable digital markets in Europe,” Vestager added.
