James Delahunty
9 Jan 2014 10:04
Google has been fined €150,000 by a French watchdog after it ignored a three month ultimatum to bring its privacy policies in line with French law.
The dispute stems back to a March 2012 decision by Google to consolidate dozens of privacy policies across its web services into one policy that covers all its services, such as GMail, YouTube and Google+. It would combine its data collection and storage practices on its users across all services.
This immediately got the attention of consumer and privacy watchdogs around the world, particularly in Europe, as Google gave its users no choice to opt out of the change.
France's CNIL eventually ordered Google to change its practices to reflect the law in France, but Google apparently ignored the order, prompting the €150,000 fine. CNIL also ordered Google to display its ruling on its French homepage for a 48 hour period within 8 days of being informed.
"The company does not sufficiently inform its users of the conditions in which their personal data are processed, nor of the purposes of this processing," CNIL said in a statement.
Google faces more scrutiny from Spain, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom over its privacy and data collection practices. However, given that Google billions Google makes in profits from its business, six-figure sum fines are hardly going to force it to make changes.