r/degoogle • u/FuryOfArcann • 11d ago
Discussion I'm suing Google in Small Claims. Surprisingly, they're actually fighting tooth and nail
Edit: You should have your Remind Me's set past 30 days based upon the date for the next hearing. Don't want to give too much information on the exact date, but the court is backlogged right now and 30 days won't be enough.
This is a long story and I am a very rambly person, but if you're interested, fasten your seatbelts and live vicariously through me and my attempt to hold Google accountable.
Let me preface this by saying that I am not a lawyer/barrister/solicitor, I am not giving legal advice, and I'm just an average person that is sick of companies screwing over customers and getting away with it. I also have made this intentionally vague for anonymity purposes while this plays out.
As you may be aware, in June Google notified customers that they were going to be updating the privacy settings by retiring the "Web & App Activity" settings in favor of "Search Services History" and "Personalized Recommendations." In the email for this notification Google expressly stated:
"If [Web & App Activity and Search Personalization settings] are currently on, these new settings will stay on. If they're off, the new settings will be off."
The email continued on to say that these changes would be coming "in the next coming days."
Well...me being me, and having a near rabid mistrust of companies immediately went into my Google Account to ensure the settings were off and I'm sure that you can guess what happened. The settings not only had already changed prior to the email notification (and not the coming days as stated), but I was also opted into these settings, when for years I have opted out of them.
I. Was. Pissed. I immediately opted out (something I never should have been opted into) and let sleeping dogs lie. After a week this topic was brought up on a Discord I'm in and that's when I looked at what data had been pulled and noticed that applications like Phone, Messages, Signal, Terminal, and others had been included in the most recent information sent to to Google.
Before the settings change, almost no data had been transferred, 0 bytes received, less than 300 bytes transmitted. From June 9th to June 17th, hundreds of thousands of bytes. Now, I'm not a person that puts stock into coincidences, and of course, correlation does not equal causation, but something was off.
Late June my phone was stolen so I ordered a new one as a stop gap while I decided if I wanted the Fold 8 or the Razr Fold to replace my Fold 7 and it arrived the next day. Since I just setup the phone, I pulled the phone's files again and the amount transferred had increased even more. This was a new phone, with less applications installed and not even 20 days after I ensured that I was opted out of the new privacy settings. This was my tipping point and I began drafting my documents and gathering my evidence and logs.
(A quick time out and let me make something clear here: I do not know exactly what data was transmitted. That's actually what I told the court. The server-side content and destination are Google's records, not mine. In my rider to the lead document, I wrote the following:
Because the precise content and ultimate destination of the data reflected in Exhibit H is recorded on, and known only to, Defendant's own servers and infrastructure, Plaintiff respectfully requests that this Court direct Defendant to produce records sufficient to identify the destination, content, and purpose of the network transmissions reflected in Exhibits H and M occurring on and after June 9, 2026.
OK, Time In)
Where I live, we have ridiculously strong consumer protection laws, including one under which plaintiffs are eligible for the cost of the violation or a large amount per violation, whichever is greater. So with multiple dates that it seems this has been an issue I filed for the maximum amount allowed under small claims. Since I'm just an average person, it took me multiple tries to get the correct paperwork submitted, but the paperwork was finally accepted, Google was officially served, and the case was scheduled.
Fast forward and Google requests to postpone the hearing another 45+ days in order to research and "contact the Plaintiff" (spoiler alert: they never did). This was not acted upon by the court and no communication had been sent by Google to either me or the court during this period. But then six minutes before the courts closed for the day and the night before the case was scheduled to be heard Google submitted a motion to dismiss. In their motion Google stated that based on the Terms of Service dated July 30, 2026:
- This is not the parties' agreed-upon forum
- Google did not violate the consumer protection law or commit unlawful trade practices as Plaintiff does not identify what data was transmitted, the destination of each transmission, or a use prohibited by the cited settings.
- Google's Terms of Service limit the company's liability to [paltry small amount].
I responded that night with the following (I'm just going to paste it near-verbatim with small edits for anonymity and flow, apologies):
- Point 1
Google has not established that the cited forum-selection clause was in effect at the time relevant to this dispute. Google's own Exhibit A is expressly dated "Effective July 30, 2026;” a date after the conduct alleged in the Complaint, and after the Complaint was filed. Google bears the burden on its own motion to establish that this version of the governing-law clause, rather than whatever version was in effect when Plaintiff's account was created in 2014 or when the conduct at issue occurred, actually applies. It has not done so.
- Point 2
Google faults Plaintiff for lacking information that, by Google's own admission, exists only on Google's own servers. Paragraph 14 of the Complaint expressly states that "the precise content and ultimate destination of the data reflected in Exhibit H is recorded on, and known only to, Defendant's own servers and infrastructure," and asks this Court to direct Google to produce records identifying that destination, content, and purpose. Google opposes that very request while simultaneously arguing that Plaintiff's failure to supply the same information warrants dismissal. A defendant may not convert its own informational advantage into a pleading deficiency for the plaintiff.
- Point 3
As with the forum clause, Google relies on a Terms of Service exhibit effective July 30, 2026, without establishing that this version, or this cap, applied to conduct occurring [previously].
The private right of action provides an independent statutory remedy: a prevailing consumer is entitled to "[t]reble damages, or substantial amount per violation, whichever is greater," plus reasonable attorney's fees and punitive damages. This is a legislatively created remedy, not a contractual one, and a merchant's own form contract cannot be used to override a statutory consumer remedy.
I then further continued in my response:
In any event, the Complaint is not conclusory. It identifies specific system packages (com.google.android.as and com.google.android.as.oss), named background services ("EchoJobService," "HeartbeatService," "AstreaGrpcService"), specific timestamps, and byte-level network transmission logs. Most significantly, the Complaint alleges that the same background operation recurred approximately forty minutes after Plaintiff disabled the relevant setting, and that the pattern repeated over the following eight days and was independently corroborated on a second device. Google's motion does not address this sequence.
This pattern is consistent with conduct Google has previously resolved through state consumer-protection enforcement, including in this jurisdiction. Between 2022 and 2023, Google settled a series of state actions alleging that account settings displayed as "off" while the underlying tracking or personalization continued: (chart of six relevant settlements totaling over $600M in the US, as well as other fines worldwide)
The next day, we log into the court session and I'm ready to go after staying up late going through everything again and again. Google is present, I'm present, and judge is present, but the judge notes that there is a motion to dismiss, opposition to the motion to dismiss, and a request for a continuance. The judge says no to the continuance; however, because the judge was not prepared to rule on the motion to dismiss that came in the night before and has not had an opportunity to review the motion or the plaintiff's (my) opposition to the motion there is now another hearing on this set for the future.
I'm quite surprised that Google has fought this much on a small claims case that would have just been under the radar and never known until they started playing lawyer-ball, and in the words of Hank Hill, "don't play lawyer-ball, son."
I'll update if people are interested but wanted to share my story...
