It’s been over two years since Google pulled the plug on its biggest attempt at launching a social network, but many forget a big reason why it was killed off. A privacy breach on Google+ resulted in a class-action lawsuit, and now, millions of former users are getting payouts.
Going back, Google+ went dark in April 2019, just a few months after Google revealed that a massive data breach had exposed the private data of over 50 million users. Then, almost exactly a year ago, Google confirmed that it had settled a class-action lawsuit regarding the data breach.
The case, filed in 2018, was finally settled in 2020 with Google agreeing to pay $7.5 million to users of the defunct social network. ArsTechnica notes that almost half of that money went to legal fees, but the rest is now being paid out to around 1.72 million people. That’s the number of former Google+ users who went through the process of filling out forms connected to the class-action lawsuit before October of last year.
For those former Google+ users, payouts from the lawsuit will amount to a mere $2.15. That’s hardly anything, really, but it’s not a far cry from what could have been. Originally, the estimate was about $12 after fees, though that would have only happened if 450,000 people had submitted forms.
More on Google+:
- Many receiving settlement notices for Google+ class-action lawsuit
- Google+ shutdown expedited after new privacy bug affecting 50M+ users discovered
- As Google+ goes dark, here’s what the social network meant to the 9to5Google team
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