Google pays up to settle voice-activated ad targeting claims

Google has agreed to pay US$68m (A$98m) to settle a six-year class-action lawsuit alleging its voice assistant listened in on American users to deliver targeted advertising.

First filed in July 2019 by five Google users, the case hinged on whether Google devices, including Google Home, Pixel smartphones, and smart displays such as the Nest Hub, secretly recorded and shared private conversations when the voice assistant was accidentally triggered.

While Google has not admitted wrongdoing or liability and denies violating privacy laws or improperly recording or sharing users’ conversations, the technology giant accepted a preliminary settlement filed last week to avoid further litigation costs, court documents show.

According to the filings, complainants alleged that Google Assistant occasionally misheard ordinary speech as “hot words,” a phenomenon known as “false accepts,” which could then be used to deliver targeted advertising based on the resulting unintended recordings.

All US residents who bought Google devices or experienced “false accepts” since May 18, 2016 will be eligible to claim a portion of the settlement once a judge grants final approval. Given that legal fees and costs will gobble up a significant proportion of the settlement — and that there are more that 10m users of Google devices in the US — rewards per person may be measured in the tens of dollars rather than millions.

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The case comes amid longstanding public concern over whether smartphones and voice-activated assistants, including Apple’s Siri and Amazon’s Alexa, are covertly “listening” to users to deliver personalised advertising. In December 2024, Apple reached a similar US$95 million (A$137 million) settlement with smartphone users.

Similar to Google, Apple denied all wrongdoing, and specifically said it never used its voice assistant to build marketing profiles.

Google has also faced privacy scrutiny in the Australian market.

In 2020, the ACCC launched Federal Court proceedings alleging the company misled users by combining personal data for targeted advertising.

That case was dismissed in 2022, with the court finding users had provided informed consent via Google’s notifications and privacy policy updates.

However, the ACCC also secured a win in 2022, when the court ordered Google to pay A$60 million in penalties for misleading consumers about the collection and use of their personal location data on Android phones between January 2017 and December 2018.