Probably the plaintiffs believe in good faith that they are pushing for positive social change against a nefarious practice (and they certainly seem misguided, at best, to me). But
-It's a class-action suit. It's not unlikely the driving force behind organizing the class was the plaintiff's law firm looking for a long shot bet at a cut of a big payout, a reputation-making case, etc. I have no idea if this is the case. The incentives around this kind of thing are varied and not necessarily at all high-minded though.
-It bugs me when people start to think of the Googles of the world as a public utility. Assuming that you could make the world a better place by regulating their behaviour into something socially desirable is short-sighted. We have gmail because Google can monetize it with ads. Treating firms like Google as public utilities subject to public interest based regulation is not that different from treating banks as public utilities that are too big to fail (granted that's a complicated issue on its own)
“People believe, for better or worse, that their email is private correspondence, not subject to the eyes of a $180 billion corporation and its whims,” said Consumer Watchdog president Jamie Court.
-I automatically get suspicious when would-be social reformers throw in the market cap of a company like this, as if to say, come on, they can afford to share the wealth. In a system where there's rule of law, it should be that that the practice is either legal or it isn't, right?
-It could well be that California has statutes on the books that clearly make this sort of thing illegal. If that's the case, we should fully support the plaintiff's winning, followed by brisk lobbying of legislators to correct the ridiculousness. Selective enforcement of bad laws is a horrible practice that opens the door to all kinds of arbitrariness and manipulation by the state. See rule of law.