Google Settles Eavesdropping Lawsuit

Google has agreed to pay $68m to settle a class-action lawsuit over Google Assistant's privacy practices.

Like Apple's Siri, Google's voice assistant is designed to wait passively in the background until it hears the trigger phrase ("Hey Google"), at which point it records whatever is said next and sends it back to Google's servers for processing - and eventually advertising purposes.

The lawsuit alleges that Google Assistant would often get triggered by mistake, but that audio would still be collected and used for advertising anyways.

Google denied any wrongdoing, but agreed to the terms. Of course, lawyers will take their cut first (expected to be about 1/3 or $22m), then the remainder will be split up among the plaintiffs.

In Q3 of 2025 alone, Google made just over $102bn. If I did my math right (which is always a big "if" with me), that makes this fine .07% of one quarter of Google's revenue.

The article notes that Apple faced a similar controversy last year.

At Privacy Guides, we typically recommend against such virtual assistants - especially in conjunction with voice activation - for this very reason.