Google faces $50M suit, Incognito fight
- Google’s $50 million settlement over claims it underpaid and sidelined Black employees is now at the claims stage, while a separate Incognito privacy fight has shifted back into court. - The workplace deal covers more than 4,000 Black employees in California and New York, and the Incognito case now centers on whether users can still pursue damages after Google’s 2024 data-deletion settlement. - Together, the cases show Google still facing parallel scrutiny over employment practices and privacy disclosures after earlier settlements reshaped, but did not end, the disputes. (reuters.com)
Google is dealing with two separate legal fights at once: a $50 million race-bias settlement with Black employees and a renewed court battle over Chrome’s Incognito mode. (reuters.com) (bloomberglaw.com) The employment case stems from a proposed class action filed in 2022 by April Curley and other workers who said Google steered Black employees into lower-level jobs, paid them less, and blocked advancement. Reuters reported in May 2025 that Google agreed to a preliminary $50 million settlement covering more than 4,000 employees in California and New York. (reuters.com) The complaint said Black workers made up 4.4% of Google’s workforce and 3% of leadership in 2021. Google denied wrongdoing, and spokesperson Courtenay Mencini said the company remained committed to paying, hiring and leveling employees consistently. (reuters.com) The Incognito dispute is different. It centers on whether Chrome’s private-browsing setting stopped Google from collecting data, or only kept browsing history off a user’s own device. (time.com) (bloomberglaw.com) Google settled the federal Incognito class action in 2024 without paying damages to users. Instead, it agreed to delete billions of browsing-data records, revise disclosures, and let users block third-party cookies in Incognito mode for five years. (time.com) That did not end the money claims. Bloomberg Law reported this week that Google is now asking a federal court to curb damages suits brought by consumers who say the browser still collected data after they turned on Incognito mode. (bloomberglaw.com) A Ninth Circuit ruling on April 20, 2026, helps explain how the case got here. The appeals court said 185 Chrome users who tried to intervene after the settlement moved too late, leaving intact the earlier decision that certified an injunctive-relief class but not a damages class. (ca9.uscourts.gov) The panel said intervention would likely have forced Google and the named plaintiffs to start over and could have undone the settlement deal. That means users seeking money are still largely pushed toward separate claims instead of one federal damages class. (ca9.uscourts.gov) The two cases are unrelated on the facts, but they land on the same company at the same time. One is about how Google treated employees inside the company; the other is about what Google told users about privacy outside it. (reuters.com) (bloomberglaw.com) For now, the race-bias case is waiting on court approval and claims administration, while the Incognito fight keeps moving through arguments over who can seek damages and where. Google has settled one dispute in principle and is still trying to narrow the other. (reuters.com) (bloomberglaw.com)
