The Google Location Tracking Class Action is a $62 million settlement approved by a federal court on May 3, 2024, addressing allegations that Google continued to track and store location data from millions of users even after they disabled the “Location History” feature on their devices. However, this is not a settlement that pays individual class members. Instead, the entire settlement fund—minus attorneys’ fees and court costs—goes to privacy-focused nonprofit organizations through what’s called a “cy pres” distribution.
If you used a mobile device in the United States between January 1, 2014, and December 4, 2023, you were likely part of the class affected by Google’s tracking practices, but you will not receive a check or be required to submit a claim to participate in the settlement. The case centered on a specific technical issue: Google allowed Location History to be toggled off in account settings, but the company continued tracking location information through a separate feature called “Web & App Activity.” A user could believe their location was not being recorded when, in reality, Google was collecting precise location data through another mechanism. The lawsuit alleged this constituted deceptive conduct under California consumer protection law. The settlement resolves these allegations without Google admitting wrongdoing.
Table of Contents
- What Exactly Is This Settlement and Who Gets Paid?
- Why Isn’t There Individual Compensation in This Settlement?
- Understanding the Class Definition and Time Period
- Timeline and Important Dates for the Settlement
- The Proof Question Problem
- Where the Settlement Money Is Actually Going
- What This Settlement Means for Future Privacy Cases and Litigation Strategy
What Exactly Is This Settlement and Who Gets Paid?
The google Location Tracking settlement is structured entirely as a “cy pres” award, a legal mechanism where settlement money goes to charitable organizations rather than to the individuals harmed. The court determined that distributing $62 million to approximately 247.7 million potentially affected class members would be administratively infeasible. Calculating individual damages would require proving exactly when each person’s location was tracked, how much harm they suffered, and identifying billions of people across a fifteen-year period. Instead, Judge Edward J. Davila of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California authorized distributing the settlement funds to nonprofit organizations working on digital privacy issues.
Of the $62 million settlement fund, $18.6 million goes to the class’s attorneys, and approximately $42 million is distributed to seventeen court-approved nonprofit organizations, including the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the ACLU of Northern California, the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University, Free Press, and the Center for Democracy & Technology. These organizations use the funds for privacy advocacy, research, and policy work—not to compensate individual users. This represents a significant shift from traditional class actions where individuals receive cash payments for demonstrated losses. The key limitation here is that this settlement does not acknowledge financial harm to individual class members. Unlike settlements where each person calculates their losses based on how much their privacy was worth, this settlement treats the harm as a collective social injury to be remedied through privacy advocacy funding rather than individual compensation. As a result, people who were subject to Google’s tracking practices will not receive money even if they were significantly affected.
Why Isn’t There Individual Compensation in This Settlement?
The court’s decision to reject individual claims in favor of cy pres distribution reflects a practical problem inherent in privacy class actions. Calculating how much an individual user’s location data was worth, or how much they were harmed, is extremely difficult to prove. How much is one year of location tracking worth? How much harm did it cause to a specific person? Should someone who used Google’s services for this entire period be compensated at the same rate as someone who used the service for just a few months? These questions have no clear answers, which is why the court determined individual claim administration would be infeasible. Additionally, collecting evidence from 247.7 million people would require an unprecedented claims administration process.
The settlement administrator would need to verify that each class member actually used Google services during the relevant period and that their location data was tracked. Without robust identification records linking each person to specific Google accounts across a fifteen-year period, the process would face enormous practical and privacy challenges—ironically, requiring the collection of personal data to prove that personal data had been collected without proper consent. A warning worth noting: courts have faced increasing criticism for cy pres settlements in consumer privacy cases. Some legal scholars and consumer advocates argue that directing settlement money to nonprofits benefits organizations more than actual class members, particularly when the harm complained of is significant. This criticism has not deterred courts from approving cy pres settlements, but it has prompted judges to scrutinize nonprofit selection more carefully and to require that funded organizations’ work relate to the settlement’s subject matter—in this case, digital privacy.
Understanding the Class Definition and Time Period
The settlement class is defined broadly as “all natural persons residing in the United States who used one or more mobile devices and whose Location Information was stored by Google while ‘Location History’ was disabled at any time during the Class Period.” The Class Period spans from January 1, 2014, through December 4, 2023—nearly a decade of potential tracking. This definition captures a massive number of people: any U.S. resident who owned an Android device, iPhone using Google services, or any mobile device with installed Google applications during this period. The specific allegation addressed by the settlement is that Google stored location information through Web & App Activity settings even when users disabled Location History. For example, a user might go into Google account settings, find the “Location History” toggle, turn it off believing this would stop Google from recording their movements, and then continue using Google services like Google Maps, Google Search, and YouTube.
Unknown to the user, Google was simultaneously collecting location data through a separate, less visible feature. The user thought they had opted out of location tracking when they had only disabled one avenue through which Google collected location information. A significant practical limitation: proving you were part of this class requires demonstrating you had a Google account or used Google services during the relevant period while your Location History was disabled. However, because this is a cy pres settlement with no individual claims, you do not need to prove anything to remain part of the class. You are automatically included if you meet the basic criteria and resided in the United States during any portion of the Class Period while using Google services.
Timeline and Important Dates for the Settlement
The settlement was filed and began its legal review process in 2023, but the key dates for public awareness came in 2024. On May 3, 2024, Judge Edward J. Davila granted final approval of the settlement, moving it from preliminary approval status to final. This was the date the settlement became legally binding. The class had been notified before this final approval date, with an objection deadline of March 4, 2024, which has long passed. After final approval, a compliance hearing was scheduled for February 13, 2025, at 9:00 AM PT in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California (San Jose Courthouse, Courtroom 4, 5th Floor).
This hearing addressed implementation details and confirmed that the settlement administrator was properly distributing funds to the designated nonprofit organizations. However, this hearing date is primarily administrative and does not affect class members directly—there is no deadline for individuals to take any action regarding this settlement because no individual claims are being accepted. An important development: an appeal was filed with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. As of June 11, 2025, oral arguments were presented before the appellate court, and the settlement remains subject to appellate review. This means the settlement is not yet final in the absolute sense—a appellate court could still modify or overturn the lower court’s decision. However, pending appeal, the settlement is proceeding with fund distribution to nonprofit organizations. If you were waiting to hear whether this settlement would be overturned, the realistic timeline suggests appellate decision could take several more months.
The Proof Question Problem
A core challenge in this case was addressing what constitutes proof that you were tracked. Google’s location collection operates through complex background processes that most users never see. When Google collected location data through Web & App Activity despite Location History being disabled, most users had no way to prove it was happening. They did not receive notifications, they could not see in real time which data was being collected, and unless they explicitly accessed their Google account activity logs, they would never know. This “proof problem” is exactly why individual claims were found to be infeasible. The court would have needed to require every class member to provide evidence that they had a Google account, that they disabled Location History, and that Google stored location information anyway.
While Google’s servers surely contain records of this activity, providing direct proof to each claimant would require Google to generate personalized reports for hundreds of millions of people. Google would need to verify the accuracy of each report and potentially defend against disputes. The administrative burden and cost would have consumed a significant portion of the settlement fund. The limitation here is important: because this settlement does not require proof of individual tracking, individuals harmed by the practice receive no compensation. Someone whose location was tracked extensively across years and who can demonstrate they explicitly disabled Location History settings receives the same benefit as someone whose location was tracked minimally—which is to say, no direct benefit at all. Both are part of the class that funded nonprofit privacy organizations, but neither receives money.
Where the Settlement Money Is Actually Going
Of the $62 million settlement, $18.6 million was allocated to the class’s attorneys for bringing and settling the case. This left $43.4 million in the net settlement fund, which was then allocated to seventeen nonprofit organizations working on digital privacy and consumer protection issues. Examples of recipient organizations include the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a group that litigates digital rights cases; the ACLU of Northern California, which advocates for civil liberties and privacy rights; the Berkman Klein Center at Harvard, which conducts internet policy research; and the Center for Democracy & Technology, which focuses on technology policy advocacy. The settlement stipulated that these organizations would use the funds specifically for work related to privacy rights, digital surveillance, location tracking, and consumer protection—ensuring the money would benefit the broader public by advancing privacy protections rather than enriching unrelated charities.
The court carefully selected organizations with demonstrated track records in privacy advocacy to maximize the social benefit of the cy pres award. Each organization receives grants ranging from approximately $1.5 million to $4 million, depending on the court’s assessment of their capacity to use the funds effectively. A concrete example of how this money might be used: the Electronic Frontier Foundation could use its grant to fund litigation challenging other companies’ privacy practices, publish research revealing how location tracking occurs across multiple platforms, or lobby for stronger state privacy laws that prevent the kind of hidden tracking Google engaged in. The ACLU could launch voter education campaigns about privacy rights or bring new lawsuits against government agencies or corporations that misuse location data. In this way, the settlement funds work to prevent similar privacy violations in the future rather than compensate past violations.
What This Settlement Means for Future Privacy Cases and Litigation Strategy
The Google Location Tracking settlement is notable for establishing that courts will approve cy pres distributions in consumer privacy cases, even when the harm is substantial and the class is enormous. This has implications for how privacy litigation is structured going forward. Class action attorneys have learned that if individual claim administration is logistically difficult—as it often is in data breach and surveillance cases—courts may be willing to accept cy pres alternatives. This creates both opportunities and risks: on one hand, cy pres distributions ensure that some remedy occurs even when individual compensation is infeasible; on the other hand, individual class members receive no monetary recovery. The settlement also reflects how courts are grappling with the difficulty of assigning monetary value to privacy violations. Google users did not lose money directly because their location was tracked; they lost privacy and autonomy, abstract harms that do not translate easily into dollar amounts.
The court’s approach—funding nonprofit advocacy instead of paying individuals—treats privacy harm as a collective social injury requiring systemic remedies rather than individual compensation. This approach is increasingly common in technology litigation, where the problem affects hundreds of millions of people but calculating individual damages is nearly impossible. The compliance hearing scheduled for February 2025 and the ongoing appellate review mean that this settlement remains subject to potential modification or reversal. Google appealed the settlement through the Ninth Circuit, arguing in part about how the terms were structured and whether the cy pres distribution was appropriate. An appellate court could decide that individual claims should have been permitted, that cy pres recipients were not appropriate, or that the settlement amount was inadequate. Until that appellate decision is issued, class members remain in a state of uncertainty about whether the current settlement terms will hold. For anyone wondering whether to expect future developments in this case, monitoring the Ninth Circuit docket for a decision announcement would be the most reliable way to stay informed about any changes to the settlement.
- —