Andre Yoskowitz
23 Apr 2013 14:43
Search engine giant has been fined 145,000 euros ($189,230) by German regulators following a long-standing case over Wi-Fi data collecting by their Street View cars.
In 2008 through 2010, the cars captured the data from unsecured networks while driving through taking pictures for their Google Maps/Street View service. Data included emails, passwords and even photos.
"In my view, this is one of the biggest data protection rules violations known. Google's internal control mechanisms must have severely failed," says Hamburg data regulator Johannes Caspar.
French regulators had already hit Google with a similar fine last year, 100,000 euro.
Google has always maintained they never used the data, nor stored it anywhere or ever viewed it.
Doing some quick calculations using Google's recent earnings report, the company makes $190,000 in profit every 7 minutes or so.