It seems Google Misfortunes are piling up, and after losing to Epic Games and having at least one antitrust case against it involving Android’s position and its own services, the Mountain View giant has now reached an agreement to end a lawsuit over tracking users through Chrome’s incognito mode.

A lawsuit for tracking users through Google Chrome’s incognito mode was filed a few years ago in the US state of California, and at the time $5 billion in damages was sought. The plaintiffs alleged that the search giant used Analytics, apps and browser add-ons to track users without their permission. Due, Google has given users a false sense of privacy and control over the data they share with it.

In Google’s defense, it argued that Chrome’s incognito mode (and any equivalent feature, such as Firefox’s private window) prevents data from being stored on a user’s computer, but does not, at least initially, prevent websites from tracking it. This is true because the private mode of web browsers is not a VPN or performs any similar function, but basically they are limited to leaving no trace locally of the browsing done through said mode, especially cookieshistory, cache and form data.

The main problem, and as can be read from the plaintiff’s arguments, was that users expected that the collection of data, even data collected by Google, would not go beyond what should strictly include private, not anonymous browsing. In fact, the lawsuit said, Google “can no longer engage in the covert and unauthorized collection of data from virtually any US citizen using a computer or telephone.”

Google was apparently cornered and decided to reach a settlement before another ruling was issued against it. The terms have not yet been disclosed by either party., but everything indicates that they will be submitted to the court for approval next February. But whatever comes of it, one thing is clear, and that is that it is very likely that the amount of damages will be less than the $5,000 million demanded by the plaintiff, but that does not mean that it will not end up being high