Google Shareholders to Receive $350 Million in Lawsuit Settlement (cpomagazine.com) 39
A lawsuit involving the now-defunct Google+ social media site "has been settled for $350 million," reports CPO magazine, "after a lengthy appeals process played out..."
"[T]he total pool after attorney and legal fees are deducted is likely to be well over $200 million." [The lawsuit] dates all the way back to 2018, when Google internally discovered that the Google+ API was being abused to access the private data of about half a million of the social media service's users. Google opted not to publicly declare the breach, as they were not legally compelled to.
News of it came via the Wall Street Journal in late 2018. Google shareholders contend that the company kept the issue under wraps due to the Cambridge Analytica scandal that Facebook was experiencing at the time, believing that they would suffer a similar negative PR blow. This was supported by an internal company memo that became public.
As the news of the exploitable software glitch gradually came out, Google shareholders took a hit as the company collectively lost tens of billions of dollars in market value. The lead plaintiff in the case is Rhode Island Treasurer James Diossa, who was responsible for overseeing a state pension fund that held stock in Google parent company Alphabet.
Google+ was shuttered in 2019 after an eight-year run due in part to repeated technical issues with unauthorized API access (as well as low user engagement).
"If the settlement is approved by the 9th Circuit judge, the proceeds will be available to Google shareholders who held stock at any time from April 23, 2018, to April 30, 2019...
"A separate class-action privacy lawsuit involving users who had private data exposed during the incident was settled in 2018 for $7.5 million, leading to very low payments for each of the claimants."
"[T]he total pool after attorney and legal fees are deducted is likely to be well over $200 million." [The lawsuit] dates all the way back to 2018, when Google internally discovered that the Google+ API was being abused to access the private data of about half a million of the social media service's users. Google opted not to publicly declare the breach, as they were not legally compelled to.
News of it came via the Wall Street Journal in late 2018. Google shareholders contend that the company kept the issue under wraps due to the Cambridge Analytica scandal that Facebook was experiencing at the time, believing that they would suffer a similar negative PR blow. This was supported by an internal company memo that became public.
As the news of the exploitable software glitch gradually came out, Google shareholders took a hit as the company collectively lost tens of billions of dollars in market value. The lead plaintiff in the case is Rhode Island Treasurer James Diossa, who was responsible for overseeing a state pension fund that held stock in Google parent company Alphabet.
Google+ was shuttered in 2019 after an eight-year run due in part to repeated technical issues with unauthorized API access (as well as low user engagement).
"If the settlement is approved by the 9th Circuit judge, the proceeds will be available to Google shareholders who held stock at any time from April 23, 2018, to April 30, 2019...
"A separate class-action privacy lawsuit involving users who had private data exposed during the incident was settled in 2018 for $7.5 million, leading to very low payments for each of the claimants."
Shareholders, not customers (Score:5, Insightful)
The settlement is for the shareholders who lost money, not the private users who had their information stolen.
End-stage capitalism is seriously fucked up.
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The settlement is for the shareholders who lost money, not the private users who had their information stolen.
No shit. You'd think the users might have a case. You might even google it, if you cared about facts instead of just making a political rant. Lazy anti-capitalism "is seriously fucked up".
https://www.reuters.com/legal/... [reuters.com]
Re:Shareholders, not customers (Score:4, Informative)
That's for a different privacy abuse by Google. The ones from Google Plus were in this previously resolved case: https://arstechnica.com/gadget... [arstechnica.com]
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If you are not satisfied with their service you should demand your money back.
Re:Shareholders, not customers (Score:4, Insightful)
I did not consent for my personal data being gathered nor sold, I don't use their services -- yet they did sell data about everyone, including me, causing everyone a large number of individually minor (usually) hardships.
Google's conduct is criminal and should be handled as such, demanding money back is for civil stuff.
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yet they did sell data about everyone
No, they didn't. Google doesn't sell data. They sell ads.
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If you wanna be pedantic they sell ad placement; they don't sell the ads themselves as they don't produce the ads.
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Google shares data with advertisers directly and asks them to bid on individual ads.
No, they don't. That's hogwash.
Google places ads based on demographics and other aggregate criteria, but they do not (intentionally) disclose information on individuals.
Feel free to prove me wrong by providing a citation.
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Re: Shareholders, not customers (Score:2)
I pay quite a bit for the services Google provides me so your joke fails for me.
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Re:Shareholders, not customers (Score:4, Interesting)
End-stage capitalism is seriously fucked up.
"The total pool after attorney and legal fees are deducted is likely to be well over $200 million."
After watching the lawyers take $150 million off the top, and the above statement making it sound like their cut was merely a light tax, you're looking at the motivator for the system we have today.
What is seriously fucked, is our apparently inability to look at that and determine root cause. We had a justice system. That was replaced by a legal system. Now that has been replaced by a fucking litigation system. And it promotes corruption. Why? Because it STILL makes money.
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End-stage capitalism is seriously fucked up.
"The total pool after attorney and legal fees are deducted is likely to be well over $200 million."
After watching the lawyers take $150 million off the top, and the above statement making it sound like their cut was merely a light tax, you're looking at the motivator for the system we have today.
What is seriously fucked, is our apparently inability to look at that and determine root cause. We had a justice system. That was replaced by a legal system. Now that has been replaced by a fucking litigation system. And it promotes corruption. Why? Because it STILL makes money.
Think of every computer-related class action suit you've ever seen: the RAM chip suit, the AMD FX core suit, etc. In every single case, once a settlement is reached, the lawyers take a third or more of the settlement money, and the actual people that the lawyers supposedly represent get something like an $8 -off coupon for something they didn't want anyway. And that's for the people that at least got something before the settlement funds run out, which is quickly.
These things aren't about justice or compens
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Useless (Score:4, Insightful)
Need one point out just how utterly useless this is? It takes 5-6 years to make its way through the courts. The shareholders will receive literally just pennies per share. The lawyers walk away with $200 million. Ok, it isn't useless for the lawyers.
That's not a justice system.
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The lawyers walk away with $200 million.
$150M, to be exact, but your point still stands. The whole justice system is a joke.
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Need one point out just how utterly useless this is? It takes 5-6 years to make its way through the courts.
p>Which means teh lawyers were working for free and opening money to pursue teh case; and would net less than zero if they lost.
The shareholders will receive literally just pennies per share. The lawyers walk away with $200 million. Ok, it isn't useless for the lawyers.
That's not a justice system.
Here's the problem - absent contingency fees, there would be no incentive for attorneys to take on many cases; especially ones where the person doesn't have the cash to pay upfront. As a result, someone who suffered a real loss would likely get nothing or whatever tiny amount they were offered to go away. Whether less law suits is a good thing is open to debate, but at least co
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That's not a justice system.
Of course it is. The whole fact that we are talking about a low value settlement is that the entire case is on shaky grounds in the first place. Just who do you propose pays for a shareholder lawsuit? "Oh darlings you lost a few $bn while we screwed up? Let me make it good by taking a $bn writedown in our upcoming financial reports so we can pay for your lower shares while they fall even further."
The entire lawsuit was stupid on the face of it. There was never any "justice" to be had here. Buying stock does
Who is paying whom here? (Score:2)
I'm seriously confused. If Google is paying its shareholders, are they not just paying themselves?
Yes, I did try to RTFA, and it is as clear as mud.
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As a publicly traded company, Google's shareholders are anyone who owns the company's stock.
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All the current shareholders will lose equity, and those shareholders who held shares for the specified period ( April 2018 - April 2019) will be paid some money.
There are currently about 13.5 billion google shares, so this $350 million payout will cost current shareholders about 2.7 cents per share.
There were about 15 billion google(ie. Alphabet) shares in 2018, so a $350 million settlement less $200 million for legal fees, should work out to something like $150 million divided amongst all those 15 billi
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Yes, they are. Congrats for grasping this often lost point.
Absolutely disgusting (Score:3)
"[T]he total pool after attorney and legal fees are deducted is likely to be well over $200 million."
A bunch of lawyers walking out with $150 millions is nothing short of obscene.
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"[T]he total pool after attorney and legal fees are deducted is likely to be well over $200 million."
A bunch of lawyers walking out with $150 millions is nothing short of obscene.
I'm not necessarily a fan of lawyers, but they are spending time and performing actual work for that. It's not their fault that the market will support their rates being so high. Also, one of the main goals of these types of suits is to punish the offender (company) and distributing that money going out to the plaintiffs, so the overall penalty amount counts, not just the payout.
Re:Absolutely disgusting (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not their fault that the market will support their rates being so high
I wasn't assigning blame. All I said was that it's obscene.
Lawyers have essentially two jobs:
1/ Translate obscure legal terms into something people who sue or have to defend themselves can understand - i.e. being the "interface" between ordinary Joes and the legal system they have to use.
2/ Find relevant case law to support their clients' claims, because ordinary Joes usually don't know the laws on the book and previous cases that can help them argue their points.
The fact that the legal system almost requires hiring a specialist to use it indicates that it is not truly a legal system for the people.
Computers and cars for example are complex systems too, but they're designed to be mostly usable by non-specialists. The legal system isn't, virtually handing those who know how to navigate its complexities a monopoly, and the ability to set any price they want for their services.
If the legal system was designed to be comprehensible and usable by laypersons, at least for the most part, it would make lawyers largely obsolete. Or at least, it would limit their scope to the most complicated cases - in which case there would be a good reason to pay them a lot of money.
But as things stand today, it's set up so that the rich are more likely to succeed in court than the poor. Of course lawyers would be stupid not to extract as much money from their rent as they can. That's the rational thing to do. It's the system that allows them to do that that's disgusting.
It will never happen (Score:1)
You cannot find a legal system that doesn't involve elite practitioners. Even in the Soviet Union, the lawyers were highly paid in comparison to others.
It's the price for access. It's the same reason people pay a lot for IT services - they need it.
If you think being a lawyer is so simple anyone can do it, check out Hans Reiser in that lawsuit vis a vis his children. Or a million other cases of some smart dude thinking he could walk into a courtroom and mop the floor with them.
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You cannot find a legal system that doesn't involve elite practitioners. Even in the Soviet Union, the lawyers were highly paid in comparison to others.
Whoever said the Soviet Union was a model to aspire to in anything?
And the fact that no legal system usable directly by the litigants exist today, or has ever existed, doesn't mean is has to be that way.
If you think being a lawyer is so simple anyone can do it,
I didn't say being a lawyer was simple. It's a very complex job made necessary by the very complex nature of the legal system.
What I'm saying is that 1/ a lot of that complexity is unnecessary and 2/ what lawyers fundamentally do - i.e. interfacing Joe Public and the laws they have to answer to - shouldn't e
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The Soviet Union was about as close as a modern country came to setting fire to the existing social order and refactoring it; hence, you'd expect if such a thing were possible, it would have happened there. It didn't. 1917 was a seminal event and an experiment that hasn't really been emulated elsewhere. No value judgement on Marxism is implied. I don't consider 1790s France to be quite modern yet - they didn't do it either, incidentally. Robespierre himself was a lawyer.
You can go to small claims court
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The fact that the legal system almost requires hiring a specialist to use it indicates that it is not truly a legal system for the people.
Literally nothing in the world can be done without specialists being able to optimise it. You have a legal system that allows you to represent yourself. The fact that you think you're better off paying someone to navigate it with a better and more well researched argument than you can make doesn't make it any less "for the people". Remember the other side are people too.
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"Lawyers have essentially two jobs:"
Computer scientists have essentially two jobs:
1/ Translate obscure APIs into something people implementing business logic can understand - i.e. being the "interface" between ordinary Joes and the computation system they have to use.
2/ Find relevant data structures to support their clients' business logic, because ordinary Joes usually don't know the schemas in the database and previous libraries that can help them implement their logic.
"The fact that the legal system almo
I am shocked. SHOCKED! (Score:2)
Another demonstration that Google's "publicly announce exploits after a 30-day grace period" rule doesn't apply to Google itself. All pigs are created equal, but some pigs are more equal than others...
$150 million for lawyer fees... (Score:1)
Don't be evil? (Score:2)