Former Which? magazine executive director Richard Lloyd, supported by the campaign group Google You Owe Us, wanted to bring a ‘representative action’ against the US-based tech firm on behalf of around 4.4 million people in England and Wales.
Lloyd alleged that Google illegally obtained over five million Apple iPhone users’ personal data between 2011 and 2012 by bypassing default privacy settings on the Safari browser to track internet browsing histories, known as the ‘Safari workaround’.
Lloyd and Google You Owe Us hoped to win between £1bn and £3bn in compensation for alleged breaches of the Data Protection Act.
The High Court initially ruled that Lloyd could not serve the claim on Google outside the jurisdiction of England and Wales in October 2018, but that decision was overturned by the Court of Appeal in October 2019.
Google challenged the Court of Appeal’s judgment at a hearing this April and a panel of five Supreme Court justices gave their verdict...