The European Commission is acting on its threat to slap down Google over its rewritten privacy policy – which allows private data to be shared across all of its platforms for advertising purposes – with fresh sanctions.
Replacing more that 60 privacy policies for services such as YouTube and Gmail, the single policy was implemented in March last year. At the time, the company was accused of putting advertisers’ interests ahead of its own users.
The EU action has been announced by the French data protection authority, the Commission Nationale de l’Information et des Liberties (CNIL), which has led the investigation.
A CNIL statement says: “Regulators allowed Google four months to implement [our] recommendations, but no response has been provided by the company.
“On February18, European data protection authorities have noted that Google did not provide any precise and effective answers to the recommendations,” and so the authorities are now “committed to act”.
A working group, led by the CNIL, will co-ordinate enforcement action which should take place in the next few months, says the statement.
Google has since issued its own statement, saying: “Our privacy policy respects European law and allows us to create simpler, more effective services. We have engaged fully with the CNIL throughout this process, and we’ll continue to do so going forward.”
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