3 Cases Against Google, Settled Out-of-Court
Google, together with its parent company Alphabet is one of the richest companies with the deepest pockets in existence today (maybe only slightly shallower than Apple’s). With a huge war chest in its arsenal, the search giant can easily settle whatever controversial lawsuit filed against it. Mountain View did indeed settled a lot of court cases recently:
Age discrimination case
$11 million is paid by Google to specifically settle out-of-court the lawsuit that accused the search giant of promoting age discrimination in their job recruitment. Former applicants more than 40 years old were the plaintiffs of the case, as they described Google’s age discrimination as being a systematic pattern and regular practice within the company’s culture. The former applicants who filed the lawsuit each receive compensation amounting to $35,000 each.
Child data sharing controversy
The search giant also settled its case filed against it by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission. The FTC accused Google of violating the Children’s Online Privacy Protection through its online services. The case was settled out-of-court to the tune of an undisclosed amount. FTC is silent as well and has not disclosed how much Google has paid.
Wi-fi snooping bug
Also, known as Wi-Spy, the court case was filed way back in 2010. The Street View system that people depend on for visualizing their turn-by-turn Maps navigation not only captures location and mapping data. It was later revealed by security researchers that it also harvests all open Wi-fi information, including personal data of users who use the captured open Wi-fi signals. Nine years later, it is still not yet known how many Wi-fi routers were included in the capture, let alone the actual number of users that have no idea that their information were captured through the use of an open Wi-fi hotspot using Street View app. The settlement of the case is to the tune of $13 million for those brave hearts that filed the lawsuit, a cheap amount for the tech giant.
Corporate giant is expected to operate within its interest, like Google it is in the interest of the company to settle lawsuits silently through out-of-court settlements. Regular cases in courts take many years to finish, enough time to cost a company its reputation and continued cost of lawyer fees. Legal settlements may sound like expensive undertaking to end cases, but it is cheaper in the long run.
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