US judge slashes lawyers’ fee request by more than $100 million in Google privacy case

Lawyers who negotiated a class action privacy settlement with Google are entitled to just a fraction of the $128 million in fees they sought as an award for their work, a U.S. federal judge ruled, finding that the attorneys achieved only limited success. U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers in Oakland on Thursday approved the settlement, which requires Google to provide a new privacy controls ‌but does ⁠not include ⁠any payment to class members.

She awarded the plaintiffs’ lawyers $21.8 million in legal fees as class counsel in the case, slashing the amount of their request by 80%.