Google fined 403 million euros in Ireland for non-compliance with GDPR

The American giant Google was fined 403 million euros on Monday by the Irish data protection regulator for violating European rules (GDPR) on the use of its users' geolocation data.

This is the fourth largest fine ever imposed by the Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC), which supervises Google at the European level, because the group's European headquarters is in Dublin.

Geolocation data can “improve the usefulness of online services, but it can also reveal a significant amount of information about a person, including inherently private information,” noted Graham Doyle, Commissioner at the DPC, quoted in a press release.

“Due to Google’s failings,” users “could be unaware that their location was being used, for example, to influence them through advertisements or to infer their interests, and could lose control of their personal data,” he stressed.

The investigation, opened in February 2020 following complaints filed by several European consumer defense organizations, targets a period between 2018 and 2020.

It concerns compliance with the GDPR (European data protection regulation) of the “Web and application activity”, “Location history” and “Location accuracy” functionalities.

“This case concerns historical rules which have since been updated,” responded a Google spokesperson.

“Starting in 2019, we significantly evolved our practices and launched robust tools that simplify the management of location data,” he added.

Google is currently the subject of three other DPC investigations, “all at an advanced stage”, according to the organization.

The heaviest fine decided by the DPC affected Meta in 2023: 1.2 billion euros concerning the transfer of data to the United States, despite fears of surveillance at the time by American services.