It’s hard to say ‘no’ to Google
In many sectors, Google has grown its way into becoming one of the biggest targets for European scrutiny. From antitrust allegations galore to concerns over privacy, the company has had to navigate through billions of euros in fines and plenty of new regulations in the wake of its own transgressions. And you can expect more legal challenges to come as consumer protection agencies across Europe are taking such steps against the tech giant for steering consumers into accepting corporate surveillance.
According to the European Consumer Organisation, a representative organization of the union’s consumer protection agencies, authorities from five member nations have filed formal complaints with the European Commission claiming that Google is in breach of the General Data Protection Regulation. Other agencies have sent missives to Google, the US Federal Trade Commission, and are warning their countries’ governments about the company’s practices when on-boarding a new user to a Google account.
Such practices include: providing an “accept all” option when presenting prospective users with permissions and settings related to how their data is collected, but not a “deny all” option; hiding information about how user data is processed away from the sign-up process, and; relying heavily on non-specific explanations for why it collects and how it integrates user data. Google’s data collection policies are applied across many services which include Gmail, the Play Store, Google Maps, and others, a number of which require the setup of a Google account to access. In short, Google makes it hard to find out what it does with your data and why. It also makes it difficult to say “no” to these practices.
The BEUC calls out Google as being the foremost proprietor of “surveillance captialism” and claims that the company has violated a number of articles in the GDPR including the processing of data more than is necessary for the provision of services and the retainment of said data for longer than required.
In the past several months, three EU member states have banned the use of Google Analytics after the company couldn’t guarantee the privacy of the data it receives from its client hosts. Google is also facing a $2.4 billion lawsuit from PriceRunner over its alleged abuse of search results to achieve market dominance for Google Shopping.
