A US judge on Friday ordered Alphabet Inc’s Google to pay more than $971,000 in legal fees and costs as a penalty for litigation misconduct in a privacy lawsuit in California federal court. The plaintiffs’ lawyers at Boies Schiller Flexner and other firms had sought more than $1m in fees and costs, after US Magistrate Judge Susan van Keulen in San Jose, California, federal court in May found Google had failed to timely disclose some pieces of evidence. The $5b lawsuit filed in 2020 alleges Google has unlawfully tracked its users’ data while they are using the company’s browsers in private, or “incognito,” mode. Google has denied liability. The sanctions stemmed from Google’s “failure to timely identify witnesses, additional documents and data sources relevant to this litigation,” van Keulen wrote in a previous order. Billing records submitted in the case last month showed Boies Schiller founder and prominent litigator David Boies charging $1,950 hourly. Boies sought compensation for 49 hours, or about $96,000.