Australian court orders Google to pay $43 million for misleading users

(Reuters) -Australia’s competition watchdog said upon Friday that Abc Inc’s Google unit was ordered by the country’s Federal Courtroom to pay A$60 million ($42. 7 million) in penalties with regard to misleading users on collection of their individual location data.

The particular court found Search engines misled some customers about personal area data collected by means of their Android mobile phones between January 2017 and December 2018. (https://reut.rs/3Ajr3Pn)

Google misled customers into believing “location history” setting on the android phones was your only way location data could be collected by it, when a function to monitor web and applications activity also allowed local data collection and storage space, the Australian Competitors & Consumer Commission payment (ACCC) said.

The watchdog, which estimates that will 1 . 3 million Google account users in Australia may have been impacted, had started the proceedings against the corporation and its local device in October 2019.

Google took remedial steps in 2018, the particular regulator said.

Within an emailed statement, Search engines said it got settled the matter plus added it has produced location information easy to manage and easy to understand.

The search engine giant has been embroiled in legal activity in Australia over the past year as the government mulled and passed a law to make Search engines and Meta Platforms’ Facebook pay press companies for content material on their platforms. (https://reut.rs/3JRaTzz)

($1 = 1 . 4055 Australian dollars)

(Reporting by Navya Mittal in Bengaluru; Modifying by Sriraj Kalluvila)