Google in privacy showdown with EU states

Six of Europe’s largest data protection agencies launched a joint legal case against Internet search giant Google on April 2 over alleged breaches of EU privacy regulations. The action by France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, and the UK is the first such coordinated privacy action by EU member countries against a company. The European Commission reported in 2012 that Google’s privacy policy did not comply with European law because it failed to sufficiently inform users of the data being gathered, and set a four-month deadline for the firm to update its policy. This has now expired without any policy shift from Google. Outlining the penalties Google may face, The Financial Times says –

European watchdogs can currently impose only fines below €1m but new EU-wide rules could soon empower them to inflict on companies penalties up to 2 per cent of their global annual turnover. In Google’s case that would add up to about $760m (€594m), based on its 2011 revenues. The new rules could be approved by the end of this year by EU lawmakers and member states.

While The Daily Telegraph underlines the different attitudes to privacy in the US compared to Europe, writing –

It would probably be too cynical to suggest that Europe’s adversarial approach to Google is, in some quarters, driven by crude anti-Americanism. A different attitude to privacy is ingrained into German culture, for instance. But it is also obvious that, even with the enormous scale of the common market, Europe will always be a secondary market for Google compared with the US. If regulators make it harder for the company to operate in Europe, it is easy enough for it to simply switch bits off. So, should you wake up one day to find that Street View is not available, but Microsoft’s equivalent is, you would have European regulators to thank for that surprising monopoly.

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