Google has been
fined €50 million (~$57 million) by French regulators, the first major penalty under a sweeping new European Union privacy law known as GDPR, which took effect last year.
According to the French government agency, known by the acronym CNIL, Google is still in breach of the law. CNIL
explained that Google had violated two provisions of the law: first by not making its data-collection policies easily accessible enough and second by not obtaining sufficient and specific user consent for ad personalization across each of Google’s numerous services, including YouTube, Google Maps, and more. "It is not a one-off, time-limited, infringement," the agency said Monday. The two complaints were filed
jointly on the day the law went into effect by the French digital advocacy group La Quadrature du Net and the group Noyb.eu, a watchdog organization started by
Max Schrems. The young Austrian privacy activist has been tangling with Silicon Valley giants—notably Google and Facebook—for years.