Google settles to pay $350 million in shareholder privacy lawsuit
Google settles for $350 million in the US court over a 2018 security bug on Google+, concealing data exposure from users.
According to a filing with the US Court for the Northern District of California, Google settled to pay $350 million over a security bug on its former social media platform, Google+. Namely, the case goes back to 2018 when Google found out in March 2018 that its system exposed the personal data of millions of users on its Google+ platform.
According to the filing, Google’s executives were aware of that yet decided not to disclose such information either to the public or the shareholders. As Reuters reported, shareholders stated that Google feared the company would be exposed to legal scrutiny similar to Facebook’s in 2016 for how Cambridge Analytica used its data in the 2016 election.
According to The Washington Post, Google and other Big Tech companies have faced legal scrutiny for years, where Google paid billions of dollars in fines for anti-competitive behavior in Europe. Now it seems that Google is about to face a similar situation in the USA as in late December, the company settled to pay $5 billion in a consumer privacy lawsuit.
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