Judge pops bid to balloon Google data privacy verdict to $2.36B

A San Francisco federal judge has refused to undo a jury’s decision to make Google pay nearly $426 million for violating the privacy rights of as many as 100 million Google users by allegedly tracking their data after the users thought they had disabled tracking.

But the judge said he also wouldn’t go along with plaintiffs’ new demands to boost the payout to nearly $2.4 billion, either.

On Jan. 30, U.S. District Judge Richard Seeborg denied posttrial motions filed by both sides in the weeks that have followed the jury’s award.

The San Francisco jury had rendered its verdict in September 2025, following a trial presided over by Seeborg in federal district court.

The lawsuit had proceeded to trial nearly five years after attorneys from the firm of Boies Schiller Flexner, of San Francisco, Miami and Washington, D.C., had lodged their lawsuit.