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Google Fined $22.5M Over Safari Privacy Violation
wiredmikey writes "The US Federal Trade Commission fined Google $22.5 million for violating the privacy of people who used rival Apple's Safari web browser even after pledging not to do so. The FTC said Google had agreed with the commission in October 2011 not to place tracking cookies on or deliver targeted ads to Safari users, but then went ahead and did so. 'For several months in 2011 and 2012, Google placed a certain advertising tracking cookie on the computers of Safari users who visited sites within Google's DoubleClick advertising network,' the FTC said in a statement. 'Google had previously told these users they would automatically be opted out of such tracking.' While Google agreed to the fine, it did NOT admit it had violated the earlier agreement."
So about .06% of their annual revenue. I'm sure Google is suffering mighty over this puny "fine".
They're just rich.
Now if only they'd fine Apple for installing Safari as a trojan semi-silently in the background while calling it an iTunes update on the surface. That's illegal about a dozen different ways.
Google's profit is in the billions! How exactly is 22.5 million justice? Its just the price of doing business, and I bet they still made a profit.
Only a lawyer can imagine a world where a person agrees to paying a 22.5 million dollar fine and then can seriously claim they did nothing wrong.
Currently hooked on AMP
But remember, evil is subjective.
Yesterday, it was posted that IE 10 will have Do Not Track by default turned on by default.
Does that mean Google can be fined if it ignores the users' request for the Do Not Track? What is the difference between this and Safari? I wonder because the comments in that story suggested that website operators can use it an an opt in and ignore it otherwise. I wonder if it would then be a liability to do so?
http://saveie6.com/
Step 1: Get caught doing something shitty
Step 2: Promise to the regulators that it won't happen again
GO TO Step 1
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
I am patiently awaiting my check.....
Oh...wait....they hack my phone, and the government gets to keep the money????? Something wrong here.
What is so special about Safari users that would entitle them to be treated any differently than users of any other browser?
I don't remember the details, but wasn't this a little more nuanced then just Google straight-up lying?
Also, and I'm not trying to defend Google if they did lie about this or whatever, but I think a lot of the crap over cookies is popular media sideshow scare stuff. It (in this case, I believe) doesn't identify individual users and anyway people can generally be tracked by IP and sessions and other stuff.
Microsoft, Apple, Google, Comcast, VerizonWireless, .....
Silly me I thought when you said, "I won't do it anymore," that meant you'd stop. That doesn't seem to apply to the things called corporations.
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
* For sufficiently narrow definitions of "evil".
#DeleteChrome
"We'll pay your fine... not because we are wrong, but because it.... 'costs too much' to prove that we didn't really do anything wrong."
I see that Google has grown large enough and been around long enough to attract high priced, high powered legal council. Good for them. They are a true corporation now.
They just need to take the final step of setting up the revolving door between themselves and Washington DC and they will truly be in the big leagues.
I have doubleclick DNS entries mapped to a local web server that returns 404s. It solves the conflict of interest problem with google and doubleclick for me.
It would have been 22 billion...
There's a reason we had a stomach-kick not wrist slap and promises philosophy to regulating corporations. They were smart enough to know that businesses would run cost benefit analyses and risk eating a puny fine. No doubt that google got their moneysworth out of this little bit of deception.
Of course in New America anything that might hurt company profits has to be bad for America
I'm not critiquing the reasons why Google is getting so much federal government attention. I'm just wondering why Google is going so much more attention from the FTC than Microsoft ever did. Maybe my memory is too short, but I don't remember MSFT getting many fines. Anybody have a (real) answer?
Lol are you serious? You don't remember the threat of a $1billion fine because some wankers on the other side of the pond cried that they weren't spoon fed a browser choice screen at windows startup? Browser choice is obviously more important than privacy information here.
"Semi-silently"? What, kind of like a stealth aircraft that, umm, isn't really particularly stealthy?
The dialog is clearly split - top half, iTunes, bottom half, other stuff. I uncheck it. It clearly states, right up front, that it's optional. Easy.
And the titlebar at this point says "Apple Software Update". Once you choose to go ahead and install iTunes, then it will say iTunes updates, which I think sounds alarmingly sensible, quite honestly.
iTunes is a dreadful, dreadful piece of software on Windows. But you're flat out fabricating stories, and that's not fair.
Because the Google fine was just announced. That means it's news today.
This has been long forgotten by the people who oversee the court system, but the purpose of the law is "to moderate human behaviour."
Such a petty fine against such an incredibly wealthy company will do nothing to moderate their behaviour. To make it worse, Google is openly engaged in large scale tax evasion/avoidance. In the UK last year out of £224 million in taxes they only paid a pitfull £6 million. A fine of £14 million is pocket money to them - just operating overhead. If the government wants to moderate Google's behaviour (besides just pretending to want to) then they would fine them far, far more.
PS. In the words of Willard Mitt Romney, "Corporations are people too, my friend!"
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2125883/Amazon-Google-sordid-reality-tax-avoidance.html
http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2012/08/09/is-google-avoiding-or-evading-taxes-in-the-uk/
I always wondered with fines imposed by the FTC, ITC, FDA etc. -- where does the money go? Is there any incentive for govt regulatory bodies to make sure they hit a quota of fines each year so they can keep up with their budget?
By now they seem to have enough important movers and shakers in their pocket, that they can get put of immoral and criminal behavior without even having to admit something and with fines that are a joke. Time for everybody with still intact ethics to leave them.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
"A fine of £14 million is pocket money to them - just operating overhead. If the government wants to moderate Google's behaviour (besides just pretending to want to) then they would fine them far, far more."
A fine thought, however, think of the consequences of say fining Google a £/$1 billion for an offense that hasn't harmed much less killed any kittens. This would jack up the liabilities of companies that do real harm like an oil spill or a nuclear radiation leak. So what do your propose? A government takeover since there's no way such a company can pay a multitrillion £/$ fine?
I say fine the company a fair amount but then order them to fix the problem and repair the damages along with a threat for more drastic action if it fails to implement the court order. This is besides making good on the actual damages including sickness/lost revenue/etc, which are a separate matter.
You can't modify human behavior if you send every offender to death or condemn businesses to a similar fate for offenses that don't merit such harsh treatment.
Your memory is just too short.
I blame the Conservative coders over at Google+.
After 30+ years of blaming liberals for everything while the entire country went to shit smothered under failed conservative ideology, it's about damn time to start blaming conservatives for things for a change.