SAN FRANCISCO — Tech giants Meta and Google won't be able to quickly delete a class action lawsuit brought by Android phone users, accusing Meta of allegedly engineering a backdoor that allowed its tracking pixel to circumvent protections against tracking users' online actions, and accusing Google of allegedly not doing enough to stop Meta from doing it.
On May 11, U.S. District Judge Rita F. Lin rejected most of the two companies' motions to dismiss the class action lawsuit on behalf of potentially tens of millions of Android smartphone users, accusing the companies of invasion of privacy and other violations of federal and California state laws.
In the ruling, Lin said she believed the evidence presented thus far in the case showed plaintiffs had established a credible claim that Meta had intentionally redesigned its tracking pixel to sidestep industry standards and allow the parent company of Facebook and Instagram to harvest information about their users to target them with advertisements.
And while acknowledging Google was seemingly "dismayed" after learning of Meta's alleged actions, the judge said plaintiffs had done enough to this point to back their contention Google could have done more to design Android's operating system and Google's ubiquitous Chrome web browser to prevent the alleged surreptitious tracking.
Lawsuits against the companies have been pending in Northern California federal court since 2025. Cases have been combined into one consolidated action.
Plaintiffs are represented in the case by attorneys with the firms of Bursor & Fisher, of White Plains, New York; Milberg PLLC, of Miami; Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein, of San Francisco; and Ahdoot & Wolfson, of Burbank, among others.
The lawsuits were filed on behalf of named plaintiffs, including Devin Rose, of Los Angeles; Yolanda Cunningham, of Solano County; Bert Velilla, of Cook County, Illinois; and John Ginder, of Santa Barbara.
However, the plaintiffs seek to expand the action to include at least tens of millions of other Android phone users in California and throughout the U.S.
The lawsuit centers on claims accusing Meta of allegedly consistently perfecting its so-called tracking pixel software code to track Facebook and Instagram account holders across the web, even when they are using devices on which they are not logged into their Facebook and Instagram accounts.
According to the complaints, this comes despite the industry standard known as "sandboxing," under which apps are not supposed to tell other apps what a user is doing on its platform, without user knowledge and consent.
According to the lawsuit, Meta sidestepped those supposed protections by allegedly editing its pixel tracker repeatedly, even after other browser, app and website designers and operators took steps to prevent it.
According to the lawsuit, Meta allegedly did so to continue collecting data on its users' web browsing activities, so as to perfect their "holistic picture of each user" and to help sell advertising, by allowing advertisers to better craft ads targeted to specific users based on their browsing activity.
According to published reports, Meta is expected to earn more than $243 billion from ads in 2026, up from $196 billion last year.
Further, the lawsuits named Google as a co-defendant, asserting its browser and Android operating systems are "overly permissive" to Meta's alleged tracking practices and failed to secure users' privacy.
In response, Meta and Google sought to dismiss all of the claims.
Meta particularly asserted its privacy policy should be sufficient to defeat the plaintiffs' claims, noting the policy expressly warns users that Meta's "business partners may also choose to share information with Meta from cookies set in their own websites' domains, whether or not you have a Facebook or Instagram account or are logged in."
The policy further warns users that Meta's tracking pixels "may be set on the domain of the business partner whose site you're visiting."
But the judge said the policy doesn't squarely address the claims of the lawsuit in the way Meta believes it should.
"... A reasonable user could plausibly read the Privacy Policy to not disclose that Meta would open a backdoor to link their Android web browsing activities to their Meta accounts with absolute certainty," Judge Lin wrote.
And the judge said she also couldn't grant Google's bid to dismiss, saying plaintiffs should be allowed to press their claims that Google should have foreseen Meta's alleged actions and worked to thwart them more than it allegedly did.
She noted that plaintiffs point to Apple, whose iOS operating system on its iPhones and other mobile devices more tightly control communications between apps than does Android.
"At this early stage in the case, and given the undeniably significant portion of mobile phones using Apple’s iOS, it is reasonable to infer an industry custom of placing tight controls on communications between apps based on Apple’s restrictions," the judge wrote. "In disregard of that custom, Google allegedly designed Android to allow apps to listen in on localhost ports without monitoring, requiring user consent, or imposing restrictions for Incognito browsing sessions.
"The existence of such a design flaw, which researchers deemed 'fundamental,' is sufficient to plausibly allege that Google breached its duty of care."
Meta is represented by attorney from the firm of Latham & Watkins, of New York, San Francisco and Washington, D.C.
Google is represented by attorneys from the firm of Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan, of Los Angeles, New York and Chicago.
