$5 Billion Google Lawsuit Over 'Incognito Mode' Tracking Moves Closer to Trial

If you want to go down this road, let's blame the education system for not teaching the importance of reading. Everyone has a choice to research before blindly jumping. The info, agreements and explainers are all there.

You also have a societal problem where a majority of people can't be bothered to read a single sentence before hitting buttons.

Hate on companies all you want–I'm not justifying their practices–but the issue isn't what they do, it's that people don't care enough to read.
Thats not true for everyone. As others have stated EULA is a long document in legalese no one has time to read that or any understanding of what it is.
 
My point is that it doesn't matter what companies write, or how succinct the agreement; people don't read. You can't blame a business for the most basic lack of user effort.

Lawsuits like this don't change behavior (consumer or business).
Absolutely you can blame businesses.

EULA's are legal documents written by lawyers. Most people can't read and digest them for what they really mean without a legal background. Even then, usually the Courts are left to interpret the meaning. This is intentional. It's intentionally deceptive on the part of companies in order to extract as much value from the customer as possible. In this case, value is information about the customer that Google collects and sells to generate advertising revenue.

So, I disagree you can't blame businesses. Most tech companies (Google, Meta, Twitter) generate revenue by collecting user data for sale or exploiting human nature (like Meta) to generate revenue.

An overly burdensome EULA written by a team of experienced lawyers is clearly no match for the average person on the street. No one is going to buy an iPhone or download Chrome, read the EULA and say. Nope, I don't think so. It NEVER HAPPENS and companies know it.


People don't possess the technical or legal expertise to review and digest these agreements. This is the intent of the companies involved and they do just as much as they think they can get away with.

If you think lawsuits don't change company behavior, ask Phillip Morris, DuPont, Owens Corning (asbestos) or Monsanto about that. I think they would give you a different viewpoint.
 
Google changed the wording AFTER they were sued and were called out in court for it. This case has been going on for a while.

In addition, if you read the article, Google directly connects your browsing history, incognito or not, on the backend with THEIR services and you are tracked by them directly. The judge spelled it out as one of the reasons this can proceed.
Google changed it to clarify better to people who don't know what incognito mode does.

Also, here's the lawsuit: https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg...v-03664/pdf/USCOURTS-cand-5_20-cv-03664-0.pdf

It doesn't allege that Chrome is tracking people in incognito mode. It simply states that people assume that third-party Google trackers installed on porn websites are not tracking users even in Chrome Incognito mode - which is of course blasphemous. Websites can install whatever trackers they want. Has nothing to do with Incognito mode.
 
If you want to go down this road, let's blame the education system for not teaching the importance of reading. Everyone has a choice to research before blindly jumping. The info, agreements and explainers are all there.

You also have a societal problem where a majority of people can't be bothered to read a single sentence before hitting buttons.

Hate on companies all you want–I'm not justifying their practices–but the issue isn't what they do, it's that people don't care enough to read.

Thats not true for everyone. As others have stated EULA is a long document in legalese no one has time to read that or any understanding of what it is.

My gal is a pretty experienced lawyer (15 years) and she has trouble with EULAs. She does regularly read them.
 
Thats not true for everyone. As others have stated EULA is a long document in legalese no one has time to read that or any understanding of what it is.
Absolutely you can blame businesses.

EULA's are legal documents written by lawyers. Most people can't read and digest them for what they really mean without a legal background. Even then, usually the Courts are left to interpret the meaning. This is intentional. It's intentionally deceptive on the part of companies in order to extract as much value from the customer as possible. In this case, value is information about the customer that Google collects and sells to generate advertising revenue.

So, I disagree you can't blame businesses. Most tech companies (Google, Meta, Twitter) generate revenue by collecting user data for sale or exploiting human nature (like Meta) to generate revenue.

An overly burdensome EULA written by a team of experienced lawyers is clearly no match for the average person on the street. No one is going to buy an iPhone or download Chrome, read the EULA and say. Nope, I don't think so. It NEVER HAPPENS and companies know it.


People don't possess the technical or legal expertise to review and digest these agreements. This is the intent of the companies involved and they do just as much as they think they can get away with.

If you think lawsuits don't change company behavior, ask Phillip Morris, DuPont, Owens Corning (asbestos) or Monsanto about that. I think they would give you a different viewpoint.
Frankly, how accountable should a company be when the legislative bodies responsible for protecting their constituents are the worst offenders of sneaking exploitive clauses into laws?

It's ironic that people turn to the courts for relatively frivolous matters when the 'agreements' that govern their lives are far more complicated and hidden from plain sight than EULAs.

RE: "No one is going to buy an iPhone or download Chrome, read the EULA and say. Nope, I don't think so. It NEVER HAPPENS and companies know it." Even when people do read, the convenience/utility of a service far outweighs privacy because a vast majority of people 'don't have anything to hide.'

As far as health and safety litigation is concerned, that's an entirely different topic. I'm talking in the context of tech related tracking/privacy.
 
This is a dumb lawsuit. I can't believe it isn't thrown out.

Do people not know how incognito works and how trackers installed on individual websites work?

No, Chrome in incognito mode is not tracking you. It's the websites that you're visiting that are still tracking you. Incognito mode simply means your browser isn't saving your history because you want to browse porn. It has nothing to do with trackers installed on the porn websites that continue to collect your information.

Some of those trackers installed are Google Analytics or other 3rd party analytics tools, which have nothing to do with Google Chrome or incognito mode.

Edit: Chrome clearly explains how it works:

View attachment 2243062

Put your pitchforks down.
This - all the way.

People should be using adblockers (uBlock Origin + Ghostery has been a winning combo for me) no matter their browser of choice. Since that functionality is on its way out with Chrome and pretty much non existent on Safari, that leaves Firefox and whatever else is out there.
 
They’ve had warning/explanatory messages on the startup window on incognito for so long, I doubt this will go very far/amount to much. People not bothering to read is the real problem.
But the judge, who did read, and read much more than the pop messages, said that the suit could be legit.

So read, but not too much, and you'd agree with Google?
 
Google will need to rename Incognito mode, as the word Incognito strongly suggests privacy.

I'm not sure if there is a word for "potentially reduced tracking". They may have to invent a word for it, something akin to defending yourself from a gunman by standing very still.
 
Google will need to rename Incognito mode, as the word Incognito strongly suggests privacy.

I'm not sure if there is a word for "potentially reduced tracking". They may have to invent a word for it, something akin to defending yourself from a gunman by standing very still.
Incognito mode has nothing to do with tracking. It has everything to do with not saving your porn browsing history. That’s it.
 
I was always under the impression that all Incognito mode did...no matter what browser...is that nothing is saved on YOUR computer during that time. No cookies, no history...nothing. It always says it doesn't prevent your ISP or others seeing what you're doing while in that mode and out in the Internet. It doesn't hide your IP etc etc.
 
Man I love being a FireFox user. I can just sit back and enjoy the show

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But this has nothing to do with the browser. It's ignorance on part of the people who started this lawsuit. They just don't understand what Private Browsing mode is.

Firefox behaves exactly the same way as Chrome does.
 
I was always under the impression that all Incognito mode did...no matter what browser...is that nothing is saved on YOUR computer during that time. No cookies, no history...nothing. It always says it doesn't prevent your ISP or others seeing what you're doing while in that mode and out in the Internet. It doesn't hide your IP etc etc.

You're correct.

Unless Google was still tying incognito sessions to a logged-in Google account, the browser was working as designed.
 
"Incognito" means don't use Google.

Google incognito means your identity is concealed from other 3rd parties, not from Google...and its umbrella of companies it hoovered-up.
No. Not true.

When you're browsing in Chrome's incognito mode, Google doesn't know who you are either. However, Google has very sophisticated algorithms that identify a person based on public signatures. Any company can build those algorithms - not limited to Google.
 
No. Not true.

When you're browsing in Chrome's incognito mode, Google doesn't know who you are either. However, Google has very sophisticated algorithms that identify a person based on public signatures. Any company can build those algorithms - not limited to Google.
Okay, according to you Google is using their "sophisticated algorithms" to identify a person in "incognito" mode.
 
No matter how this goes down no one is getting $5000 for such a nebulous "harm". The plaintiffs might win and still only get $8. The lawyers want to become billionaires.
 
Okay, according to you Google is using their "sophisticated algorithms" to identify a person in "incognito" mode.
Most marketing analytics companies do this.

For example, Meta and 3rd party ad networks do this after Apple removed IDFA.

It's not breaking any law. Neither is it immoral.
 
No matter how this goes down no one is getting $5000 for such a nebulous "harm". The plaintiffs might win and still only get $8. The lawyers want to become billionaires.
Companies cannot be trusted to set the vaue of anything. The damages might be small but the punitive damages should be huge - enough to stop companies from engaging in this underhanded covert collection of data.
 
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