Google has come to terms with a US legal action alleging it infringed upon the privacy of users by observing their activity when they were exploring in "private mode".
The class action aimed to obtain no less than $5bn (£3.9bn) from Alphabet, the globally-favoured search engine and its parent company.
Tech giants have come under greater inspection of their operations in America and in other countries.
The BBC has not yet received a response to its inquiry from the lawyers of either Google or its users.
On Thursday, US District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers put a legal dispute going to trial in California on pause after lawyers revealed they had achieved a provisional settlement.
Judge Rogers refused Google's proposal for the case to be dismissed earlier this year, stating that she did not accept the argument that users had given permission for Google to obtain data on their web browsing habits.
The information regarding the settlement was not made public. It is anticipated that attorneys will come before the court with a finalized settlement agreement for approval by February 2024.
In 2020, a class action was started by the law firm Boies Schiller Flexner alleging that Google had monitored users' conduct even with the browser set to "Incognito" in Google Chrome and to "private mode" on other browsers.
The statement insinuated that Google had become a "vast cache" of user data and potentially embarrassing details without any kind of oversight.
The statement suggested that Google cannot "keep engaging in covert and unapproved data accumulation from practically each and every American with a personal computer or mobile phone".
Google declared that it had been clear about the information it had obtained even when people viewed in private mode, even though many people mistakenly thought otherwise.
The search engine stated that an aggregation of search history, even when viewed in a confidential setting, would benefit site owners in terms of being able to more accurately assess how their content, products, marketing, etc. are doing.
Using Incognito mode in Google's Chrome browser affords users the option of searching the web without having their activity logged in the browser or on the device. However, websites visited may still track usage through tools such as Google Analytics.
Google is the target of legal actions that are questioning its search and digital marketing techniques.
Earlier this month, the tech behemoth declared it would allocate $700m to a resolution of a lawsuit filed by a collection of US states which blamed Google of restraining competition to its Play Store on Android gadgets.
Just a few days after its defeat in court against Epic Games, the creator of Fortnite, Google faced a lawsuit in 2020 that charged it with employing unfair practices that resulted in its application store dominating the competition.
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