GDPR one month on: Google admits that it's clueless

Google has raised more than a few eyebrows in the marketing industry by claiming the global giant is still trying to work out how it will become compliant with GDPR a month to the day after the regulation came into force on May 25 and over seven years after it was first mooted.
Speaking at a press briefing late last week, Google EMEA president of business and operations Matt Brittin insisted that too much of the detail of GDPR had come too late, despite the regulation being passed two years ago.
He said: “It’s very well intentioned, but a lot of the detail of the regulation came through very late. All of us have been rushing to make sense of it and define how we deal with it.”
Brittin admitted that Google still doesn’t know how third-party measurement will work under GDPR, and is “just starting” to work with partners it can verify comply with the regulation.
He added: “It is challenging and it’s going to be a bumpy road. Why? We’ve spent many years working with all the data protection authorities in Europe. There are 27 countries, Germany alone has 19 different data protection authorities, all of them are interpreting GDPR in their own way. We are having lots of conversations, it is well intentioned but it is quite tricky to implement.
“Over time we’ll see a world where more and more countries move towards thinking about user protection in a smart way so everyone is looking and learning from what is going on in Europe at the moment.”
Google’s admission will be a major boost to privacy campaigner Max Schrems, whose organisation NOYB filed the first official complaints about GDPR non-compliance against Google’s Android operating system – as well as Facebook and its subsidiaries Instagram and WhatsApp – just hours after GDPR came into force.

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TOPICS:customer data data protection EU data reforms Facebook GDPR Google ICO measurement personal data third-party data

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