•Giant Google logo at Google’s Bay View campus in Mountain View, California
Ireland’s data protection watchdog, acting on behalf of the European Union, said today that it had fined Google 403 million euros ($462 million) for breaching users’ location data.
The technology giant infringed the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation on the matter between May 2018 and February 2020, Ireland’s Data Protection Commission (DPC), which is charged with applying the bloc’s rules over the issue, said in a statement.
In its final decision after launching an inquiry in February 2020, the DPC ruled that Google infringed the GDPR “in respect of the lawfulness and fairness of its processing of location data in web and app activity and location history”, reports AFP.
DPC deputy commissioner Graham Doyle said that “as a result of Google’s failures… individuals could have been unaware that their location was being used to, for example, influence them with ads or to infer their interests”.
He added that “the retention of users’ location data for longer than necessary aggravated this loss of control”.
Alongside the fine, the regulator said it had “ordered Google to bring its processing into compliance within six months”.
Contacted by our correspondent, Google did not immediately respond.
