Google Agrees to Delete Browsing History in Incognito Mode Lawsuit Settlement

Photo: Matt Slocum, File (AP)

Google will delete browsing data the company compiled on Chrome users who thought their data wasn’t being collected while using Incognito mode, according to a new report from the Wall Street Journal Monday. The move is part of a settlement with consumers who first sued in 2020 after it was revealed that using Incognito mode didn’t stop Google from collecting enormous amounts of data on a given user’s browsing history.

The settlement details for the class action lawsuit were filed in federal court on Monday and will see Google destroy “billions of data points” from incognito browsing and force the company to “update disclosures about what it collects in private browsing,” according to the Wall Street Journal. The settlement will also allow users to disable third-party cookies in the Incognito setting.

Google reached a preliminary settlement in December 2023 that averted a trial, but the settlement still needs to be approved by a judge. Monday’s settlement doesn’t include any payments to individual users, but people may still be able to make individual financial claims in the future.

From the Wall Street Journal:

The court granted class certification for injunctive relief sought in the lawsuit but didn’t approve a class of plaintiffs for financial damages. This means users affected would need to file lawsuits individually against Google. On Thursday, a lawsuit on behalf of 50 individuals was filed alleging privacy violations in California state court.

As the Journal notes, internal communications by Google executives suggest the company knew consumer perception about just how “private” incognito browsing was didn’t quite match the reality.

“We are limited in how strongly we can market Incognito because it’s not truly private, thus requiring really fuzzy, hedging language that is almost more damaging,” Google’s chief marketing officer Lorraine Twohill wrote in a 2019 email unearthed during the litigation.

For its part, Google is hailing the settlement terms as a victory, noting it won’t need to pay out the billions initially sought.