Citation[]
United States v. Google Inc., 2012 WL 5833994 (N.D. Cal. Nov. 16, 2012).
Overview[]
In 2011, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) settled charges with Google for $22.5 million after alleging that Google violated an earlier privacy settlement with the FTC when it misrepresented to users of Apple's Safari web browser that it would not track and serve targeted advertisement to Safari users.
According to the FTC, Google had placed advertising tracking cookies on individuals' computers and falsely represented that because of Safari's default settings, individuals automatically would be "opted out" of cookie tracking. Instead, Google's tracking cookies circumvented Safari's default settings, which enabled the company to use these cookies to track individuals and present them with targeted advertisements. As a result of the settlement, Google agreed to disable its use of advertising tracking cookies.