Skip to main content

Google and ‘Google, You Owe Us’ begin $4.3 billion court battle

A campaign group in the United Kingdom is pressing forward with a lawsuit claiming Google owes a payout to everyone who used an iPhone between 2011 and 2012, because of Google’s data gathering techniques on the Apple browser Safari. The group, “Google, You Owe Us,” accuses the technology giant of bypassing security restrictions on the Safari browser on iPhone devices to gather personal data, while insisting to users that it was not able to do so. The group claims that this bypass, known as the “Safari Workaround,” was used to sell personal data from 4.4 million iPhone users in the U.K.

And this privacy case threatens to cost Google a whopping $4.3 billion should the tech firm lose.

Recommended Videos

This week, a U.K. court heard arguments from both Google, You Owe Us and Google, and documents show that British iPhone users could receive up to $1,000 each if Google loses. On Monday, Google pushed for the case to be dismissed entirely, noting that there’s no way to check to see if users were actually affected by the Safari Workaround.

“The privacy and security of our users are extremely important to us,” Tom Price, Google UK’s communications director, said in a statement. “This case relates to events that took place over six years ago and that we addressed at the time. We believe it has no merit and should be dismissed.”

Google You Owe Us lawsuit
Image used with permission by copyright holder

Google denies the claims, holding that the breach was not serious enough to break each users’ human rights (and that it should have originally been tried in California). Richard Lloyd, former director of product-review company Which, is representing the iPhone users, and told BBC Radio 4’s Today program in 2017 that “Google and similar tech giants from Silicon Valley are behaving as if they are above the law.” He beseeched the courts to let him hold Google to account for what he termed a deception. Legal firm Mishcon de Reya has agreed to represent the group at court, agreeing that data is a “valuable new currency,” consumer rights need to be upheld, and new systems to police them should be established.

This is hardly the first time that one of Silicon Valley’s tech giants has been sued over the misuse of data. In 2011, Apple was sued for tracking U.S. iPhone users without permission, after the iOS 4 update enabled location tracking in the background. This particular case against Google dates back to 2015, after the same campaign group won the right to sue Google over this particular breach of privacy.

Issues with the Safari Workaround date back even further; Google settled out of court with U.S. state attorneys for $17 million in November 2013, and paid a $22.5 million fine to the Federal Trade Commission in August 2012 after the FTC decided that Google had misrepresented its stance on tracking to Safari users.

This case is thought to be the first of its kind in the U.K., and may come to a dramatic conclusion in the coming weeks. Already, the amount of money in question has increased substantially; initially, the payout was expected in the $1.4 billion range. We will update this post with more information as it becomes available.

Updated on May 22: Google goes to court in the U.K. over privacy issue and could lose up to $4.3 billion. 

Lulu Chang
Fascinated by the effects of technology on human interaction, Lulu believes that if her parents can use your new app…
New iPhone 17 Pro render keeps us guessing on the final design
Apple iPhone 17 Pro Render

Apple is to expected to announce the iPhone 17 series later this year, likely sometime in September if previous release patterns are anything to go by. By our calculations, that puts us around five months out, though math is not our strong point – we're writers here after all. 

What we do know however, is that in the upcoming months we are no doubt going to see more conflicting rumors about what we can expect from the iPhone 17 and iPhone 17 Pro models in terms of design. A few months back, it was suggested the iPhone 17 Pro models would feature a new camera bar across their rear, taking on a more Pixel-like approach. 

Read more
Latest iPhone Fold rumor tells us a little more about the camera
Semi-open state of a foldable iPhone concept

Foldable phones have been around for over five years now and there are several options available. It's not just Samsung and Google in the folding space, but Motorola, Huawei, Oppo, OnePlus and Honor too. There is one company notably missing however, and that's Apple. 

The company has long been rumoured to be working on a folding iPhone, and there's talk of a larger folding device too. Both are speculated to enter mass production in late 2026 with a launch then happening towards the end of next year or early 2027. 

Read more
iOS 18.4 bug is bringing old deleted apps back from the dead
iPhone 13 mini updating to iOS 18.4.

If you've seen an old app floating around on your phone that you could have sworn you got rid of months ago -- it's not just you. Users on Reddit and Apple's Community Support forum have been reporting ghost apps trying to reinstall on their phones after updating to iOS 18.4.

Spotted by MacRumors, it appears this bug has started causing old deleted apps to resurface over the past 24 hours. Most of the reports on Reddit seem to be focused on gaming apps such as Call of Duty, Squid Game, Asphalt Legends, and Cooking Mama, though there are a few other app types mentioned as well.

Read more