Google is Ordered by an Australian Court to Pay $43 Million for Deceiving Users

Alphabet Inc’s Google subsidiary was ordered by a federal court to pay a A$60 million fine for misleading users

Australia’s competition watchdog said Friday that the country’s federal court has ordered Alphabet Inc’s Google unit to pay a A$60 million ($42.7 million) fine for misleading users into collecting their personal location data.

The court found that Google misled some customers with personal location data collected from its Android mobile devices between January 2017 and December 2018.

Google misled users into believing that setting a Location History on their Android phones is the only way it collects location data, while features that monitor web and app activity also allow local data to be collected and stored, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) says.

The watchdog, which estimates that 1.3 million account users in Australia may be affected, began lawsuits against the company and its local unit in October 2019. Regulators said took corrective action in 2018.

Google said in an email statement that it fixed the issue, adding that it made location information easy to manage and understand.

The search engine giant has been embroiled in legal action in Australia over the past year as the government is considering and passing a law requiring Meta Platforms Facebook to pay media companies for content on their platforms.

(1 US dollar = 1.4055 Australian dollars)

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