Google Defends Sharing User Data in Ad-Targeting Class Action

Alphabet Inc.'s Google says a potential consumer privacy class action over its delivery of targeted advertising represents a “misunderstanding of how the Internet works.”

The information that Google shares for targeted advertising, such as cookie and location data, is routinely shared online, lawyers for Google wrote in a brief filed Oct. 1 in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. So Google users can’t claim an expectation of privacy in such information, the brief said.

The lawsuit takes aim at Google’s real-time bidding system, in which data collected on Google users is provided to participants in an ...