Ireland’s Data Protection Commission (DPC) has fined Google €403 million, or about $463 million, for breaking EU privacy rules between 2018 and 2020. Reuters reports that the company now has six months to bring its handling of people’s location data in line with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
The case centers on three Google settings: Web & App Activity, Location History, and Location Accuracy. According to the DPC, the way Google processed location data through them violated the principles of lawfulness, fairness, and transparency.
DPC Deputy Commissioner Graham Doyle spelled out what that meant for users. “Due to shortcomings in Google’s practices, users may not have known that their location data was being used, for example, to target them with ads or to infer their interests,” he said. “As a result, they could have lost control of their personal data.”
Doyle also flagged a second problem: Google kept that data longer than necessary. In the regulator’s view, this further eroded users’ control over their own information.
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The DPC opened its investigation in 2020, following complaints from several European consumer groups, including the pan-European umbrella organization BEUC. It examined whether Google had a proper legal basis for processing location data and whether it was clear enough with users about it.
The penalty is the fourth-largest the DPC has issued under the GDPR. Since becoming the lead regulator for most major US tech companies in the EU, the DPC has handed out fines totaling more than €4 billion. Three more formal investigations into Google are still underway in Ireland, and the DPC says all of them are in their final stages.
Google is also under pressure from other regulators. The European Commission previously fined the company more than $1 billion for breaching the Digital Markets Act (DMA), including by favoring its own services in search and restricting developers on Google Play. Over the summer, South Korea’s competition regulator accused Google of abusing its position in the Android app market.
