Google has agreed to pay $68 million to settle a class action lawsuit arguing that its voice-activated assistant secretly recorded smart device users in violation of their privacy.
A preliminary settlement was filed on Friday in San Jose, California, federal court, but still requires approval by U.S. District Judge Beth Labson Freeman.
The tech giant was accused of illegally recording and disseminating private conversations after its Google Assistant tool was triggered so it could send them targeted advertising.
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Google Assistant, which is only supposed to record when a user says phrases such as “Hey Google,” or “Okay Google” or when someone manually pushes a button on the device, inappropriately recorded personal conversations when these “hot words” were not used, without the knowledge of the users of Google smartphones, home speakers, laptops, tablets, Chromecast media players and even wireless earphones, according to the lawsuit.
Users claimed they were targeted with ads based on things they had said when they had not attempted to trigger their smart devices using a hot word.
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Google did not acknowledge any fault, but said it decided to settle to avoid the “uncertainty, risk, expense, inconvenience and distraction” of lengthy litigation, according to court documents.
Lawyers for plaintiffs may seek up to one-third of the settlement fund, or about $22.7 million, for legal fees.
Apple reached a similar settlement with smartphone users in December 2024 over its virtual assistant, Siri, for $95 million.
Google has also settled other privacy complaints in the past, including one reached last spring, when it agreed to pay $1.4 billion to Texas to settle a lawsuit claiming the company collected users’ data without permission.
It was also ordered in September to pay $425.7 million for invading users’ privacy by collecting data on millions of people who had turned off a tracking feature in their Google account.
In 2024, the company agreed to destroy billions of data records of users’ private browsing activities to settle a lawsuit accusing it of tracking people who believed they were browsing privately, including in “Incognito” mode.
Reuters contributed to this report.
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