Alphabet Chief Executive Officer Sundar Pichai was excused by a decide from having to face questioning in a client privateness lawsuit over knowledge mining.

Pichai had been ordered in December to take a seat for a deposition for as much as two hours in a case alleging that the know-how big scoops person knowledge by way of its Chrome net browser even in “Incognito” private-browsing mode.

But US District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers on Monday overruled the sooner order by a Justice of the Peace decide.

Tens of billions of {dollars} in damages are at stake for Google within the proposed class-action case, in keeping with Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Matthew Schettenhelm.

“We appreciate today’s decision,” stated José Castañeda, a Google spokesman. “We strongly dispute the claims in this case, and will continue to vigorously defend ourselves.”

Pichai’s deposition may have helped the plaintiffs substantiate claims that inner paperwork present Google knew customers shopping in “Incognito” mode misunderstood how safe their knowledge was.

The Justice of the Peace decide did not take into account whether or not Pichai has “unique or superior personal knowledge” of the problems or handle whether or not plaintiffs may have gotten the knowledge they wanted with out intruding on the CEO, Rogers wrote.

But Rogers denied Google’s request to defend its advertising and marketing government Google’s Lorraine Twohill from questioning. She upheld an earlier determination that Twohill should undergo as much as 4 hours of questioning from plaintiffs’ attorneys who need to ask her about Incognito mode’s model advertising and marketing.

Google misplaced its bid to toss the swimsuit in March. The firm denies claims that it violated California privateness and federal wiretapping legal guidelines, saying the shoppers who’re suing misrepresented its options and privateness controls.

The ruling comes after Pichai, who oversaw Chrome, the world’s most-popular browser, final month dodged questioning in one other privateness case accusing Google of snooping on Chrome customers even after they opted out of sharing their knowledge.

Google can also be dealing with privateness fits by Arizona, Texas, Washington, Indiana and Washington, DC, that accuse it of tricking shoppers into disclosing location knowledge for advert concentrating on.

The case is Brown v. Google LLC, 20-3664, US District Court, Northern District of California (San Jose).

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