France Slams Google with $57 Million GDPR Fine for Tracking Users

Months after the groundbreaking user privacy regulation GDPR went into effect across Europe, Google gets its first massive fine.

The French watchdog organization CNIL just issued a 50 million euro ($57 million) GDPR fine against Google, accusing the company of a lack of transparency and insufficient attempts to obtain the users’ consent for the way their data is handled.

The complains have been gathered since May 2018, after a French privacy group (La Quadrature du Net) and a privacy activist, Max Schrems, filed multiple lawsuits against Google.

We are very pleased that for the first time a European data protection authority is using the possibilities of GDPR to punish clear violations of the law,” said Schrems in a statement.

Under the GDPR, a company that mishandles user data can be fined with 20 million euros or 4 percent of global annual revenues, whichever sum is largest. That means that, even though 50 million euros is nothing to sniff at, Google could have seen a fine of up to 4 billion euros.

Of course, multiple countries and organizations have filed complaints against giants like Google and Facebook ($8.8 billion in one day!) but neither company has yet to pay a fine.

It remains to be seen if Google will pay this fine imposed by the CNIL. In a statement the company said that it is “studying the decision to determine our next steps” and added that it is “deeply committed to meeting those expectations and the consent requirements of the GDPR.”

Also read: ✍Google Is Probably Tracking You, Even with Location Turned Off✍