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13-year Google privacy settlement pays litigants the equivalent of a Big Mac meal
(www.theregister.com)
this post was submitted on 28 Oct 2023
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This is the best summary I could come up with:
About 2.5 million people who clicked on a Google Search link between October 25, 2006, and September 30, 2013 can expect to receive $7.16 to compensate them for claims of violated privacy, after an epic legal battle with the ad giant.
In July, Clifford Weiler, a retired attorney and a claimant in the case, filed an objection, saying that given the nature of the alleged violations, Google's size and revenue, and duration of the misconduct, the settlement is far too low.
"The small amount provided to each claimant in the proposed settlement invokes concern that this may be a friendly lawsuit to clear the defendant as the plaintiff's team of attorneys receives voluminous fees and costs for basically moving papers around," he wrote.
The 13-year-old case, as outlined in the second amended complaint [PDF] from 2012, alleged that Google violated the privacy of people using its search engine.
Web owners back then would receive these search terms when a searcher clicked on their link: The full URL with query parameters would be passed via the Referer header.
In any event, around 2010, Google began testing the encryption of search keywords in the Referer header and by 2011 announced the change.
The original article contains 605 words, the summary contains 200 words. Saved 67%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!