Google is in a bit of trouble as the company has just been slapped with a €150,000 fine for violating privacy laws in France.
After months of deliberation, the Commission nationale de l'informatique et des libertés (CNIL) ruled against the search giant for breaking the law with its unified privacy policy. The €150,000 fine is a lot less than the €300,000 fine the CNIL threatened back in September of 2013. According to the CNIL, Google will be required to display a notice on its Google.fr homepage for a maximum of two days explaining the situation to users.
"On 1 March 2012, Google decided to merge into one single policy the different privacy policies applicable to about sixty of its services, including Google Search, YouTube, Gmail, Picasa, Google Drive, Google Docs, Google Maps, etc. Nearly all Internet users in France are impacted by this decision due to the number of services concerned," CNIL said.
France is seeking Google to qualify user processed data as personal data. In addition, French law applies to user personal data despite Google claiming otherwise.
"In its decision, the Sanctions Committee considers that the data processed by the company about the users of its services in France must be qualified as personal data. It also judged that French law applies to the processing of personal data relating to Internet users established in France, contrary to the company's claim," CNIL said.
This isn't the first time Google has been charged and fined for privacy violations. Six European countries have launched probes into Google's operation in regards to privacy. Just last month, Spain had fined the company a whopping $1.2 million, which could indicate the direction other countries might take. Still, despite all the probes and fines, Google has maintained its innocence, but if more fines are laid out in the future, Google might be forced to amend its privacy policy once more.
It would be interesting to see if Google will appeal. However, we doubt this will happen since the fine is exceptionally small and does not pose a threat to Google's finances in one way or the other.
