Tech giant Google has been forced to pay out for privacy violations, even as it faces severe criticism for crushing free speech.
A federal jury in San Francisco ordered Google to pay a fine of $425.7 million on September 3 following a class action privacy lawsuit. The Big Tech company was found guilty of violating privacy by collecting data from some 98 million users over an eight-year period starting in 2016, even though the users had turned off a Google tracking feature.
Google, of course, asserted innocence despite the verdict, Reuters reported. But this is not the first time Google has forked out money over privacy violations. In fact, earlier this year, Google had to pay $1.375 billion to the state of Texas after it was found guilty of unauthorized tracking and collection of biometric data. Back in January 2023, the company paid $29.5 million to Washington, D.C. and Indiana over user location tracking. Google paid out $391 million to 40 states in 2022 for the same reason.
“Clearly, the reward, for Google, is worth more than the risk of getting caught, and the apparent deterrent,” said MRC Free Speech Director Michael Morris. “This is not the first time Google has been slapped with something like this, and it may not be the last. With a censorship track record over a mile long and aspirations to win the data-driven artificial intelligence race, a paltry $425 million is a drop in the bucket to a company with a market capitalization as big as Alphabet -Google, at around $2.81 trillion.”
Given the company’s pattern of blatantly disregarding privacy and its history of biased censorship, Google cannot be trusted.
For instance, an MRC Free Speech America study last week exposed how Google search results propped up an attack on House Republicans as the House appropriations subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencie ’considered whether Congress should re-fund extreme leftist outlets NPR and PBS.
Google also partnered in January with The Associated Press to bring its content to artificial intelligence chatbot Gemini.
And in August, the day after a deadly shooting at a Minneapolis Catholic school, Google lined a News tab search with content from leftist outlets. None of the headlines that Google displayed made reference to the fact that shooter Robin Westman, born Robert Westman, identified as “transgender.” MRC also reported Aug. 22 that, despite hype around its “preferred sources” tool, Google boosted leftist media on topics related to President Donald Trump despite the tool being enabled.
Furthermore, Google-owned YouTube continues to censor free speech. On August 24, for example, YouTube imposed a warning context label about abortion on Hickory Grove Presbyterian Church (PCA)'s sermon titled "Does a Woman Have the Right to Choose? (Ex 21:22-25).” On July 14, YouTube also age-restricted a video on the firearms channel Mrgunsngear. The video from six years’ ago showed a shooting event montage. These are just two of the hundreds of YouTube censorship cases logged in MRC’s unique CensorTrack database.
Free speech is under attack! Contact your representatives and demand that Big Tech be held to account to mirror the First Amendment while providing transparency, clarity on hate speech and equal footing for conservatives. If you have been censored, contact us using CensorTrack’s contact form, and help us hold Big Tech accountable.
