Australia’s competition watchdog said on Friday that Alphabet Inc’s (GOOGL.O) Google unit was instructed by the country’s Federal Court to pay $60 million ($42.7 million) in penalties for misinforming users on the collection of their location data.
The court discovered Google misinformed some customers about personal location data through their Android mobile devices between January 2017 and December 2018.
The search platform misinformed users into thinking “location history” setting on their android phones was the only way location data could be stored up by it, when a feature to track web and applications activity also enabled local data collection and storage, the Australian Competition & Consumer Commission (ACCC) said.
The watchdog, which gauges that 1.3 million Google account users in Australia may have been affected, had begun proceedings against the company and its local unit in October 2019. Google took corrective actions in 2018, the regulator said.
In an emailed statement, Google said it had resolved the matter and added it has made location information easy to conduct and simple to comprehend.
The search engine giant has been caught up in legal action in Australia over the past year as the government reviewed and adopted a law to compel Google and Meta Platforms‘ (META.O) Facebook to pay media companies for content on their platforms.
($1 = 1.4055 Australian dollars)
