Google Agrees to Pay Record Fine for Privacy Violations
Google has agreed to pay $22.5 million to settle allegations that it violated its privacy promises by bypassing the privacy settings of users of Apple’s Safari Internet browser in order to track them, the Federal Trade Commission said on Thursday.
“The record-setting penalty in this matter sends a clear message to all companies under an FTC privacy order,” commission Chairman Jon Leibowitz said in a statement. “No matter how big or small, all companies must abide by FTC orders against them and keep their privacy promises to consumers, or they will end up paying many times what it would have cost to comply in the first place.”
The FTC said that Google’s actions violated a consent decree that the Internet giant reached last year over the rollout of its now-defunct social-networking service, Buzz. Despite this, Google did not have to admit to any wrongdoing as part of Thursday’s settlement.
The penalty, which has reportedly been in the works for weeks, is the biggest fine the FTC has ever levied on a corporation for violating the terms of a previous settlement. While the fine is a drop in the bucket for a company that had nearly $45 billion cash in the bank at the end of 2011, FTC officials said Google could be subject to greater fines if the company commits additional violations.
“We have Google under order for another 19 years, and I think this civil penalty order sends [a message] to Google that the FTC isn’t kidding around,” FTC Consumer Protection Bureau Director David Vladeck said during a conference call with reporters. “If there are further violations, the FTC will insist on increasingly higher penalties.”
Last year, Google agreed to undergo an independent audit every two years for two decades as part of a settlement over allegations that it violated its privacy policies by automatically signing up Gmail users for Google Buzz.
The FTC alleged in its latest complaint that despite its promises to the contrary, Google between 2011 and 2012 placed electronic cookies on the devices of Apple’s Safari browser users to track those users for advertising purposes. In many cases, Google bypassed the default setting on Safari’s browser that blocked such cookies, the agency said.