The Google fine – thoughts from Mike Gillespie

• by Ellie Hurst
• Advent IM Blog

Google fine – it’s a whopper eh? And justified! It shows what can happen when data subjects get hacked off enough to band together with privacy groups and take the fight to the big tech companies.  Google has a long history of ignoring individuals’ rights and shrouding invasive monitoring and underhanded data collection in badly published and difficult to decipher privacy notices.

And their response? “We will take some time now to consider our next steps”.

Not, “We will immediately become an ethical company”.

If anyone thinks any of these big tech companies are providing their services and social media platforms for their benefit, then they are deluded. They are massive data exploitation companies.

This is the first, but undoubtedly not the last big fine under the new regulations. As the French watchdog says, Google are not just in breach, they are in ongoing breach because as yet they have not changed a thing about their business practices.

I personally and professionally welcome this action, and wholeheartedly hope that it’s the start of a clean-up of these tech companies and their devious and nefarious exploitation of data subjects.

Come the revolution…

Although Google’s European headquarters is in Ireland, it was decided among the authorities that the case would be handled by the French data regulator, since the Irish watchdog did not have “decision-making power” over its Android operating system and its services.

BBC.co,uk

Great example of the regulators working together. Mike