Australian Court Orders Google To Pay $43 Million For Misleading Users
The court found Google misled some customers about personal location data collected through their Android mobile devices between January 2017 and December 2018.
Google on Lawsuits For Deception
Google misled users into believing the location history setting on their android phones was the only way to keep track of locations. When a feature to monitor web and applications activity also allowed local data collection and storage, the Australian Competition & Consumer Commission (ACCC) said.
The watchdog estimates that the deceit affected 1.3 million Google account users in Australia. Court proceedings against the company and its local unit began in October 2019.
The Google regulator said Google took remedial measures in 2018. Google said it had settled the matter and added it has made location information simple to manage and easy to understand, in an emailed statement
The search engine giant has faced several legal action in Australia over the past year. The Australian government mulled and passed a law to make Google and Meta Platforms’ Facebook pay media companies for content on their platforms.
Google Threatens To Close Its Search Engine In Australia
Earlier in January 2021, Google threatened to close its search engine in Australia
As it dials up its lobbying against draft legislation that is intended to force it to pay news publishers for the reuse of their content.
The principle of unrestricted linking between websites is fundamental to Search.
Coupled with the unmanageable financial and operational risk if this version of the Code were to become law it would give us no real choice but to stop making Google Search available in Australia.
But if that bit of the draft is a negotiating tactic by Australian lawmakers to get Google to accept that it will have to pay publishers something then it appears to be a winning one.
And while Google’s threat to close down its search engine might sound full on, as Silva suggests, when you consider how many alternative search engines exist, it’s hardly the threat it once was.
