Google has been fined nearly $57 million by French regulators for violating Europe’s tough new data-privacy rules, marking the first major penalty brought against a US technology giant since the regionwide regulations took effect last year, reports The Washington Post.
France’s top data-privacy agency, known as the CNIL, said Monday that Google failed to fully disclose to users how their personal information is collected and what happens to it. Google also did not properly obtain users’ consent for the purpose of showing them personalized ads, the watchdog agency said.
To French regulators, Google’s business practices ran afoul of Europe’s new General Data Protection Regulation. Implemented in 2018, the sweeping privacy rules, commonly referred to as GDPR, have set a global standard that has forced Google and its tech peers in Silicon Valley to rethink their data-collection practices or risk sky-high fines. The United States lacks a similar, overarching federal consumer privacy law, a deficiency in the eyes of privacy rights advocates that has elevated Europe as the world’s de facto privacy cop.
Despite Google’s recent changes to comply with the EU rules, the CNIL said in a statement that “the infringements observed deprive the users of essential guarantees regarding processing operations that can reveal important parts of their private life since they are based on a huge amount of data, a wide variety of services and almost unlimited possible combinations.”
In response, Google said it is “studying the decision to determine our next steps,” adding: “People expect high standards of transparency and control from us. We’re deeply committed to meeting those expectations and the consent requirements of the GDPR.”
French regulators began investigating Google on May 25th — the day GDPR went into effect — in response to concerns raised by two groups of privacy activists. They filed additional privacy complaints against Facebook and its subsidiaries, photo-sharing app Instagram and messenger service WhatsApp, in other EU countries.