A group called "Google you Owe Us" is dragging them to court for unlawfully collecting personal data by bypassing the privacy settings in Apple's iPhone.
Facebook and Google were caught bypassing the Safari browser settings in 2012 by bypassing the cookie settings.
Google claims that this is what Google does for a living so it cannot be unlawful.:
While Google claimed at the time its practice was limited to the company’s failed Google+ initiative, the UK lawsuit alleges that Google used the workaround to track “internet browsing history, which Google then used to sell a targeted advertising service.” Google’s revenues rely on selling targeted ads, and obtaining as much personal information on its users to sell services and recommend products.
The courts are asked to "remedy this major breach of trust"
Google might have a case here...because nobody can be so naive to trust Google to respect peoples privacy.
“This is not new,” says a Google spokesperson. “We have defended similar cases before. We don’t believe it has any merit and we will contest it.”
From a technical point of view; ignoring cookie settings is done by everybody these days (especially by the UK and US governments) by Canvas fingerprinting that will uniquely identify your browser without needing the IP or the cookie.
Google could argue that cookies are bypassed by the technical development a long time ago so cookie settings are obsolete.
.
More here