Sou Hu Cai Jing·2026-02-02 07:22Core Viewpoint - Google successfully persuaded a federal judge in San Francisco to dismiss a consumer group's request for over $2 billion in penalties related to past data collection violations, where Google allegedly collected user data even after users disabled a key privacy setting [1][2] Group 1: Legal Proceedings - The U.S. District Court Chief Judge Richard Seeborg rejected the request for Google to return $2.36 billion (approximately 16.43 billion RMB) in alleged illegal profits and to halt certain advertising-related data processing activities [1] - A jury had previously ruled in September that Google secretly collected application usage data from millions of users who had disabled tracking features, establishing legal liability for the company [1] - The jury awarded approximately $425 million (about 2.96 billion RMB) in damages, significantly lower than the original claim of $31 billion (approximately 215.88 billion RMB) [1] Group 2: Google's Position - Google continues to deny any wrongdoing and plans to appeal the jury's September ruling [2] - The judge also dismissed Google's request to cancel the class action status covering 98 million users and 174 million devices [2] - The plaintiffs claimed entitlement to Google's alleged improper profits from data tracking, asserting that Google had not modified its privacy disclosure terms or changed its data collection practices despite the jury's ruling [2] Group 3: Court's Rationale - Judge Seeborg noted that the plaintiffs failed to demonstrate any "future, irreparable harm" sufficient to support a permanent injunction against Google's data collection practices [2] - The court indicated that the plaintiffs did not prove their right to claim Google's profits and that their estimates of Google's related profits lacked sufficient supporting evidence [2]