More than 687,000 current and former Illinois residents who filed claims for a cut of Google's $100 million biometric privacy class-action settlement can expect to see payouts of about $95 each.
Any person who appeared in a photograph in Google Photos between May 1, 2015, and April 25, 2022, while they were an Illinois resident was eligible to submit a claim for a piece of the settlement. The deadline to file a claim was last September.
In a May 31 court filing, attorneys for the class said payouts would be around $95 per person. At a hearing Friday, Cook County Circuit Judge Anna Loftus said the process of verifying claims filed in the case had been completed to her satisfaction and that the class had been identified in its entirety.
The Google settlement is one of a number of high-profile settlements in recent years over alleged violations of Illinois' strict biometric privacy law; other companies that have been caught in the law's crosshairs include Facebook and Snapchat parent Snap Inc. The law prohibits companies from collecting or saving biometric information without prior consent.
The Google case centered around the company's face grouping tool, which sorts faces in the Google Photos app by similarity.
"We're pleased to resolve this matter relating to specific laws in Illinois, and we remain committed to building easy-to-use controls for our users," Google spokesperson José Castañeda said in a statement.
Google did not admit wrongdoing as part of the settlement, which it reached more than a year ago. At the time, attorneys for class members estimated that payouts could be as high as $200 to $400 per person.
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