Google fined for privacy violation: $425 million in the US, €325 million in France

Google has been ordered to pay $425.7 million in damages to nearly 100 million users for violating their privacy, according to a jury verdict in a federal court in San Francisco, US media reported. The web giant was found guilty of invasion of privacy for continuing to collect the private data of these users despite having deactivated this setting, the jury concluded.

The French Data Protection Authority (Cnil) imposed record fines on Google and Shein for non-compliance with cookie legislation. This was reported by the French media. The two groups, each with tens of millions of users in France, received two of the heaviest fines ever imposed by the Cnil: 150 million euros for Shein and 325 million euros for Google.

Both companies failed to obtain users' free and informed consent before setting advertising cookies on their browsers, the authority ruled. The companies can still appeal. Cookies are small files saved on browsers by sites that can collect data on users' online activity, making them essential to the online advertising and business models of many large platforms. Cnil has intensified its checks on their use, as part of 'a general strategy of alignment (of market players) over the past five years, targeting in particular sites and services that receive a lot of traffic'.