Trump had warned nations they‘d be hit with additional tariffs for ’discriminatory’ digital taxes and regulations on U.S. tech companies.
France imposed a significant fine against American tech giant Google for displaying advertisements between Gmail users’ emails without their consent, and for placing cookies when creating Google accounts, without valid consent of French users, according to a Sept. 3 announcement.
The statement was issued by the French data protection authority, the Commission Nationale de l’Informatique et des Libertés (CNIL), in response to a complaint filed last month accusing Google of privacy breaches.
Based on investigations, CNIL issued two fines totaling 325 million euros ($378 million) against Google and its Irish subsidiary on Sept. 1, and ordered the companies to cease displaying in-mail ads and placing ad cookies during account creation without valid user consent.
“Failing this, the companies will each have to pay a penalty of €100,000 per day of delay,” it warned.
Google was found to display ads in the form of emails under the “Promotions” and “Social” Gmail tabs. When creating a new account, users were not clearly informed that the deposit of advertising cookies was a prerequisite to accessing Google’s services. Consent obtained in this context was “not valid,” and violated French data privacy laws, said CNIL.
The fines reflect the number of Gmail users residing in France.
While 53 million individuals had “illegally” seen the ads in the Gmail tabs, the cookie breach concerned more than 74 million accounts, according to the regulator.
CNIL said that Google companies remained “negligent” as they were earlier sanctioned in 2020 and 2021 for cookie breaches.
In an emailed statement to The Epoch Times, a Google spokesperson said the company was reviewing the decision.
“People have always been able to control the ads they see in our products. Over the last two years, as the CNIL has acknowledged, we made additional updates to address their concerns, including an easy way to decline personalized ads in one click when creating a Google account, and changes to the way ads are presented in Gmail.”
