$5B Google lawsuit over ‘incognito mode’ tracking moves closer to trial

theverge.com

77 points·mikece··11 comments

Does this lawsuit have any merit? Chrome says that “other people who use this device won’t see your activity” and “your activity might still be visible to websites that you visit” right when you start Incognito mode.

It does have merit. But whether or not they pay anything for it is another matter. One things for certain... What they might pay is far less then what they made by doing it.

It makes sense to me. If Google was (1) promising that Chrome had an "incognito mode" while (2) simultaneously tracking people using this mode, well, that sounds like lying to the customer.

Google lies all the time. They don't exactly have any honest practices. ...

The problem is how does the tracking that Google's ad/analytics businesses use know that the Chrome browser on your computer is running in Incognito mode?

Chrome and other browsers don't give a way for websites to detect it (at least not intentionally).

"I couldn't do this because I wouldn't let myself do it" is not a very convincing argument.

These days if ya pay off the right judge... It's fine though.

It has merit because Google provided the browser and the tracking system.

Making implicit promises binds your whole company, not just one division.

The argument is not about whether incognito failed to do something that it promised to do, but about whether it's possible to penalize Google for incognito not doing something that some set of users wished incognito might do.

And would it even be possible to have their web tracking things behave differently between normal and incognito modes?

I think we'd all be worse off if sites could detect privacy-related features like that.

“We may be able to” is such weasel words.

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