CNIL Fines Google €50 Million Over GDPR Violations

• France’s data protection regulator CNIL found Google guilty of GDPR violations.
• The authority has issued a fine of €50 million on the tech giant.
• The fine was issued because of Google failing to inform users about data consent policies.

Platforms like Google and Facebook were accused of manipulating users to get past GDPR regulations that were implemented last year, and France’s data protection regulator doesn’t seem to happy about it. CNIL has found Google guilty of failing to offer enough information that educates consumers about data consent policies and data collection settings were either not provided or hidden away to make it hard for the average consumer to find them.

Google has been handed a fine of €50 million which is quite less than the potential maximum fine amounting to 4% of a company’s annual global turnover. With the tech giant reporting revenue amounting to $33.74 billion in Q4 2018 alone, the fine could have been several billion dollars. While this is not the first time the company has been fined for GDPR violations, this is the biggest fine that has been handed to them.

Dr.-IngMarc Al-Hames, managing director of Cliqz GmbH, stated “To start with Google is absolutely right because its parent company Alphabet is by far the most important data monopolist. With Google search, the Android operating system, the Play Store app sales platform, and the Chrome browser, the Internet giant is raising behavioral profiles in alarming detail above virtually everyone in the Western world and using them for advertising purposes.”

A Google official responded to the fine stating that the company is deeply committed to meeting the standards set by regulators when it comes to transparency and control over user data and that the tech giant is currently assessing the CNIL decision to chart a way forward. It is not just tech companies like Google that are getting caught violating GDPR regulations. Up to eight streaming services may face similar action with penalties potentially crossing the billion-dollar mark.

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