No harm, no foul: Google wins case over browser tracking

US District Judge Sue Robinson has thrown out a class action against Google, saying the search giant didn’t harm anyone when it tricked Internet Explorer and Apple’s Safari browsers into accepting advertising cookies -- even though those browsers’ settings specifically forbid such cookies. Judge Robinson found Google and two other firms had circumvented the no-advertising settings, but that the consumers were unable to show they had been harmed by the fact the companies collected their data and used it to target ads to them.