Google Fined €325M by French Regulator for Privacy Violations

Google has also come under fire for steering users into accepting personalized advertising cookies when serving ads, without clearly stating that cookies were a prerequisite for accessing its services. This created the misleading impression that declining cookies would prevent users from accessing Gmail. The issue affected an estimated 74 million Gmail users in France and was deemed a violation of French data protection law.

As a result, French regulators imposed a €325 million fine on Google and ordered the company to cease serving Gmail ads without user consent within six months. In addition, Google must implement explicit cookie consent prompts during account creation. Failure to comply will trigger additional fines of €100,000 per day beyond the deadline.

It is worth noting that this is not Google’s first sanction over cookies in France. In 2020 and 2021, the CNIL (National Commission on Informatics and Liberty) fined the company €100 million and €150 million, respectively, for similar violations. Privacy concerns surrounding Google have already prompted numerous investigations in the country.

In response, Google stated that users can control the ads they see across Google products. As the CNIL has acknowledged, over the past two years we have introduced additional updates to address regulators’ concerns, including a one-click option to reject personalized ads during account creation, and improvements to how ads are displayed within Gmail. We are currently reviewing the regulator’s decision.

Google is not the only company facing scrutiny. This week, e-commerce giant Shein was also fined €150 million for similar infractions, after being found to have deployed tracking cookies on 12 million user devices without proper consent.

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