Google hit with £44m GDPR fine over ads (bbc.co.uk).
Google has been fined 50 million euros (£44m) by the French data regulator CNIL, for a breach of the EU’s data protection rules.
Said “breach” and levied fine following complaints by two privacy rights groups, noyb and La Quadrature du Net (LQDN), and involving “lack of transparency, inadequate information and lack of valid consent regarding ads personalisation” with users doubling as product for advertisers being “not sufficiently informed” about how Google collected data to personalise advertising.
The first complaint under the EU’s new General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) was filed on 25 May 2018, the day the legislation took effect.
With the groups claiming that Google had no valid legal basis for processing user data for ad personalisation, as mandated by the GDPR, the introduction of which was arguably partly to punish Google and Facebook as much for not paying sufficient tax as anything else but alas resulting in the punishing Europeans as a whole by having to constantly accept or reject cookies on every site visit and some sites just no longer offering access from Europe. But it’s likely just the start, with it estimated on GDPR rollout day last year that Google and Facebook face up to $9.3B in fines on first day (cnet.com, May 2018).
In a statement, Google said it was “studying the decision” to determine its next steps.
Which will certainly involve another seemingly monthly update of its privacy terms in the hope in exasperated product users will be sufficiently desensitised and not care what’s left ticked and what’s not.
And ironically, Google can afford the fines, seemingly profiting from the regulation:
Study: Google is the biggest beneficiary of the GDPR (cliqz.com).
With it hassling smaller advertisers more, resulting in more share for Google.
Google benefits indirectly from the effects of the GDPR, which led the online advertising market in Europe to become more concentrated, as the majority of advertisers lose market share. Google seems to have successfully taken advantage of the uncertainty around GDPR to further solidify its leading market position. On the other hand, many smaller competitors have been steadily losing market share since the GDPR came into effect.
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