Google has agreed to pay $42.7 million (A$60 million) in fines after a protracted legal battle with Australia’s competition authority over misleading customers about the collection of their personal location data. In April of last year, a federal court ruled that Google had violated consumer protection laws by misleading some local customers into believing that the company was not collecting personal information about their whereabouts using mobile devices running Android operating systems.
The issue in the case was whether it was sufficiently obvious that Google would still collect and access location data in certain circumstances with a user’s location history set to ‘off’ but their browser and app activity set to ‘on’ and one of Google’s apps being used. The company was also found to have violated two more consumer statutes, one involving misleading the public and the other involving making false statements about service performance qualities. The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission stated that when the decision was made, it sent a clear message to digital platforms, telling them to be transparent with customers about what is happening with their data.
A brief federal court hearing on Friday was informed that the parties had presented a joint statement to Justice Thomas Thawley and had agreed on a A$60 million penalty as ‘fair and reasonable’. The court heard that there may still be questions about whether the punishment rendered future behaviour ‘economically irrational’ and whether the punishment was appropriate. Before adjourning the case until later on Friday, Thawley congratulated the parties and stated that the fine was within a reasonable range.
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