Google failed for the second time to get a $425 million privacy verdict thrown out, after US District Judge Richard Seeborg refused late last week to set aside the jury’s findings. The 2020 class action, led by Anibal Rodriguez, alleged that Google’s Analytics for Firebase code kept pulling app data from users who had turned off the Web & App Activity setting. A jury sided with them last year on two privacy claims. Google then argued that pseudonymous, de-identified data can’t amount to highly offensive conduct, citing a Ninth Circuit ruling that cleared Microsoft over similar analytics collection. Seeborg wrote that what the data contained can’t be separated from Google having told users it wouldn’t collect it, and that nobody accused Microsoft of misleading anyone.
