Google Fined By the FTC

The Google Incorporation will now be expected to pay $22.5 million as a form of settlement after being fined by the Federal Trade Commission. The FTC made the announcement that Google has reached an agreement and has chosen to pay the $22.5 million as a way of settling the fact that the company failed to give Apple’s Safari users a clear explanation on their activity online and the fact that their activity was being tracked. In the complaint, it has been said that Google relied on advertising cookies used on computers of people who relied on Apple’s Safari web browser and also visited certain websites, such as Google DoubleClick. Google did not tell the whole truth to those who were using Safari and actually told these users that if they wanted to, they would not have to deal with the tracking of their Internet activity due to Safari and its default settings.

While the actions of Google are not actually in violation of any of the laws put in place in the United States, Google did violate a deal that they had made back in March of 2011, when the company stated that they would be working on protecting the privacy of their users. The current fine that Google is expected to pay is the largest fine that the Federal Trade Commission has ever received from a company that violated a specific order. The chairman for the FTC, Jon Leibowitz, recently said, “The record setting penalty in this matter sends a clear message to all companies under an FTC privacy order.” He also said, “No matter how big or small, all companies must abide by FTC orders against them and keep their privacy promises to consumers, or they will end up paying many times what it would have cost to comply in the first place.”

In the meantime, a spokeswoman for Google talked about the company and its standards, claiming that the company genuinely cares about the privacy and the security of all users. The spokeswoman also talked about the actions that Google has taken to remove the advertisement cookies from tracking the activity of the internet users so that they can safely browse the internet without having to worry about things being tracked. For quite a while now, people were speculating on the settlement and the amount of money Google would end up having to pay due to the issue at hands. Google has since stopped using these tracking cookies but must also remove them completely by February of 2014.