Google must face shareholder lawsuit claiming it hid security risks

A U.S. appeals court on Wednesday revived a lawsuit in which shareholders of Google parent Alphabet Inc accused the company of fraudulently concealing security vulnerabilities, including in its Google+ social network.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco said the lawsuit raised a “strong inference” that Alphabet’s then-Chief Executive Larry Page and his successor, Sundar Pichai, knew about the bugs and an internal memo on security issues but intentionally concealed the information from investors.

The lawsuit, led by the state of Rhode Island, followed an October 2018 Wall Street Journal article that said Google concealed the exposure of private data for nearly 500,000 Google+ users because it feared regulatory scrutiny and reputational harm.