The tech giant was in court as a class action settlement was filed Monday (01.04.24) and though it will not have to pay any damages, those people whose data was recorded despite being in a private browsing mode have the right to sue the company individually after it violated California privacy law.

Google Spokesperson José Castañeda said of the outcome: "We are pleased to settle this lawsuit, which we always believed was meritless.

"We are happy to delete old technical data that was never associated with an individual and was never used for any form of personalisation."

For the next five years, Incognito mode will block third-party cookies automatically.

Meanwhile, the EU announced last month it is investigating Apple, Meta and Google's compliance with the Digital Markets Act.

If the Big Tech companies are found to have breached the regulation that aims to make the digital economy fairer and more contestable, they will have to pay hefty fines that could total up to 10 per cent of their annual turnover.

Speaking at a press conference in Brussels, Belgium on Monday (25.03.24), EU antitrust boss Margrethe Vestager said: "We suspect that the suggested solutions put forward by the three companies do not fully comply with the DMA.

"We will now investigate the companies' compliance with the DMA, to ensure open and contestable digital markets in Europe."