The lawsuit accused Google of misleading Chrome users about how private Incognito browsing truly is. It claimed the company told customers their info was private — even as it monitored their activity. Google defended its practices by claiming it warned Chrome users that Incognito mode “does not mean ‘invisible’” and that sites could still see their activity. The settlement was first reported in December.

The suit initially asked for $5,000 in damages per user for alleged offenses related to federal wiretapping and California privacy laws. Google tried and failed to have the legal action dismissed, with Judge Lucy Koh determining in 2021 that the company “did not notify” users it was still collecting data while Incognito mode was active.

Engadget emailed Google for comment about the settlement details. We’ll update this article if we hear back.

The suit’s discovery included emails that, in late 2022, revealed publicly some of the company’s concerns about Incognito’s false privacy. In 2019, Google Chief Marketing Officer Lorraine Twohill suggested to CEO Sundar Pichai that “private” was the wrong term for Incognito mode because it risked “exacerbating known misconceptions.” In a later email exchange, Twohill wrote, “We are limited in how strongly we can market Incognito because it’s not truly private, thus requiring really fuzzy, hedging language that is almost more damaging.”

The court didn’t approve a class of plaintiffs for financial damages, so users would have to sue Google as individuals to try to collect compensation. Some didn’t waste any time: A group of 50 people already filed a separate suit in California state court on Thursday over the privacy violations.

The lawsuit’s trial was initially scheduled for February. The settlement still needs final approval from Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers of the Northern District of California before it’s official.

“This settlement is an historic step in requiring honesty and accountability from dominant technology companies,” Attorney David Boies, who represents the plaintiffs, said in a statement to The Wall Street Journal.

One piece of the settlement, the requirement that Google turn off third-party tracking cookies by default for the next five years, could already be a moot point. The company’s Privacy Sandbox initiative was already scheduled to disable all third-party cookies for Chrome users by the end of the year. It will replace them with the Topics API, a system that avoids cookies by categorizing browsing activity into locally stored topics. The new system lets advertisers target ads toward users without having direct access to their browsing data.

It’s also questionable how effective the destruction of the improperly collected data will be. Considering that the suit covers information stretching back to 2016, it’s reasonable to assume the company sold much of the data to third parties long ago or incorporated it into separate products not covered by the settlement.

Google will also have to rewrite its privacy disclosures over its data collection practices in Incognito mode. It told The WSJ it’s already begun applying the change.

The post Google says it will destroy browsing data collected from Chrome’s Incognito mode appeared first on Best News.

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Why Jason Koebler moved from Google to Kagi’s paid search engine – 0:45

Google says it will destroy data collected from users using Incognito mode – 15:01

Gurman report: Apple is working on personal home robots – 24:55

Amazon just walked out on its self check-out tech – 30:43

FCC set to vote to restore Net Neutrality – 43:00

Apple adds Spatial Personas to make the Vision Pro experience less lonely – 45:09

Proposed California state law would give tech workers the “right to disconnect” – 47:17

Tekken director responds to fighting game fans’ request for a Waffle House stage – 49:57

Around Engadget – 51:22

Working on – 54:31

Pop culture picks – 59:13

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Hosts: Cherlynn Low and Devindra Hardawar Guest: Jason KoeblerProducer: Ben Ellman Music: Dale North and Terrence O’Brien

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With this new update, you should receive a notification if one of three things occurs: A developer unpublished an extension you use, if it's marked as malware or if it's removed from the Chrome Web Store due to policy violations — such as hate speech or spyware. You won't receive a notification if Google has given a developer time to fix or appeal a possible violation. Google already had steps in place to protect users if the company found an extension to be malware. As before, once marked as such, the extension should be automatically disabled and unable to cause harm.

These new notifications will appear in the "privacy and security" tab of Chrome's settings under a section called "safety check." You'll be told how many extensions Google removed from the store and have the option to review more details. The new feature will be available in Chrome 117, which is set to come out in early September. Other updates will accompany it, such as a tune icon replacing the current lock symbol next to the search bar.

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We went ahead and tried the feature but noticed it didn’t work as intended. On YouTube, evoking the new option required two right clicks instead of one. The first right-click brought up the native YouTube menu but after a second try, the menu with the new feature was available. When you click the “Copy Video Frame,” Chrome will capture what’s currently being shown and you’ll have the option to paste your image in supported text fields within the browser, like Google Docs. We were also able to paste the image into the Apple Notes app; from there, you can save the actual file.

As of right now, there is no option to save the copied video image directly to your desktop as a file. The feature is also limited when it comes to streaming services, with many of them restricting the ability to capture content. In fact, so far we’ve only gotten it to work on YouTube. So, while this feature may technically be helpful in a pinch, it may need some fine-tuning to be more useful. Chrome’s new “Copy Video Frame” is being rolled out today for Windows, Mac, Linux and ChromeOS.

The post Chrome now lets you copy frames from videos for easy sharing appeared first on Best News.

To change the design of your browser, click a new button at the bottom of your homepage titled "Customize Chrome." Then, a pop-out gives you the option to change themes, with colorways ranging from yellow to purple and everything in between. Chrome will automatically switch to whichever choice you click on, so you can explore the different colors before committing to one. Here's where you can also choose to have your browser be in light mode, dark mode or to match your computer's settings. Your settings can differ based on which Google account you've logged into (and can even stay the standard white if you prefer).

Google has also added more options to Chrome's drop-down menu that the company says will make it quicker to access tools like Google Password Manager and extensions. You can also check out a public preview of Chrome's"fresh, modern" web store. It now has an AI-powered extensions tab and an Editor's spotlight section if you want recommendations for ones to download.

The birthday updates are mostly design-centered, but Google is also attempting to improve its Safe Browsing technology. Instead of updating its internal list of sites with phishing or malware threats every half hour to hour, Chrome should now check sites in real time. Google claims that 60 percent of bad sites exist for less than 10 minutes and that this change should improve protection by 25 percent.

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In one of Google's examples, the tool was able to spit out a decent description of what the person was selling with a prompt that simply read: "moving to a smaller place selling air fryer for 50 bucks." The tool suggested a full paragraph that was able to better communicate the user's message. "I'm moving to a smaller place and won't have room for my air fryer. It's in good condition and works great. I'm selling it for $50. Please contact me if you're interested," the suggestion read.

In another example, the user asked the tool to write them a request to return a defective bike helmet and to communicate that the product developed a crack, which isn't mentioned in the product warranty. As you can see in Google's examples, you can change the length and tone of the suggestion if the first thing the writing aid comes up with isn't good enough to serve your needs. Once you're done, you can click the Replace button to switch your prompt with the suggested writeup.

To activate the experimental tool, you have to go into Settings in Chrome's three-dot drop-down menu. There, you can find the Experimental AI page where you can activate "Help me write." To use the feature, just highlight the text you want to rewrite and then right-click on it to summon the "Help me write" box. Take note that it's only available for Chrome browsers on Macs and Windows PCs in the US at the moment. It can also only understand prompts and write suggestions in the English language.

Google first announced the arrival of the writing tool back in January, when it revealed that it was going to start integrating AI features into its Chrome browser. In addition to "Help me write," Google said that it's also giving the browser an AI-powered tab organizer and the ability the generate customized themes.

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The idea is to make it easier to reach the address bar with your thumbs, like you could on Safari and Opera on mobile, which both allow you to relocate the element on your screen. All you have to do is long press on the URL bar and then choose "Move address bar to bottom" in the options that pop up. You could do the same thing to move it back to the top of the screen, though you could also find the new feature in the Settings menu.

Unfortunately, Google told Engadget that it doesn't have a timeline for bringing this feature to Android and that it will only be available on iPhones for now. The company tested a Chrome Home interface that had the URL bar at the bottom way back in 2019, but it didn't make its way out of the experimental phase.

Update, November 01, 2023, 8:29AM ET: This story has been updated to add that Google doesn't have immediate plans to bring the feature to Android.

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If you're looking for a specific type of item, you can Google something like "shop headphone deals" and see promotions for that product. Displayed items should come from a range of sources, including big box stores, luxury brands, and local shops. Google will also show items based on what you've browsed for in the past while signed into your account. Plus, if you've looked at a certain shirt or a watch, for instance, it might appear in your "resume browsing" card alongside any current promotions on it.

Google is also coming for extensions like Honey and Capital One Shopping, with a new discount tag icon right in the Chrome address bar. Click on the button, and, just like with the others, you'll get a list of coupon codes for the site you're currently shopping on.

Plus, Google is providing more tracking information to monitor whether a price is above average — or has recently dropped. Participating sites will have a "shopping insights" label in the address bar that you can click on to view an item's 90-day price history. This chart could give you an idea of whether the item goes on sale frequently or if its sticker price has dropped recently. You can also click the bell icon on Search for mobile to receive push and email notifications when a product goes on sale. Bookmark the item instead if you're shopping on Chrome from your computer.

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Assuming everything goes smoothly, Google will then gradually ramp up the rollout to 100 percent of Chrome users by the second half of 2024. Of course, hiccups are expected during this transitional period. Should you find yourself repeatedly loading a website to no avail, Chrome will let you temporarily re-enable third-party cookies. Simply click on the eye icon on the right side of the address bar to toggle this aging feature.

According to StatCounter's November 2023 report, Google's Chrome took up 62.85 percent of the worldwide browser market share, with Apple's Safari in second place at 20.04 percent, and Microsoft's Edge in third place at a mere 5.5 percent. Considering that there are billions of Chrome users today, it is perhaps fair for Google to call the initial one-percent rollout "a key milestone" for its "responsible approach to phasing out third-party cookies."

That said, Google may still face some final hurdles set by the UK's Competition and Markets Authority, as well as similar administrations from other countries, which are looking into minimizing the impact on their local ad businesses.

The post Google Chrome's third-party cookie phaseout begins on January 4 appeared first on Best News.

When the plaintiffs filed the lawsuit, they said Google used tools like its Analytics product, apps and browser plug-ins to monitor users. They reasoned that by tracking someone on Incognito, the company was falsely making people believe that they could control the information that they were willing to share with it. At the time, a Google spokesperson said that while Incognito mode doesn't save a user's activity on their device, websites could still collect their information during the session.

The lawsuit's plaintiffs presented internal emails that allegedly showed conversations between Google execs proving that the company monitored Incognito browser usage to sell ads and track web traffic. Their complaint accused Google of violating federal wire-tapping and California privacy laws and was asking up to $5,000 per affected user. They claimed that millions of people who'd been using Incognito since 2016 had likely been affected, which explains the massive damages they were seeking from the company. Google has likely agreed to settle for an amount lower than $5 billion, but it has yet to reveal details about the agreement and has yet to get back to Engadget with an official statement.

The post Google agrees to settle $5 billion lawsuit accusing it of tracking Incognito users appeared first on Best News.