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12/22/2024 01:00:03 pm

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Google Faces $19 Million Fine in Netherlands Over Privacy Policy

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(Photo : Reuters) Google faces a $19 million penalty in the Netherlands, unless it changes its privacy policy by February 2015.

Google is facing more trouble in Europe, and this time it's the Netherlands that is unhappy with Google's privacy policy.

Dutch regulators warned Google it must change its privacy policy, or face a $19 million fine (€15 million). Google needs to make sure users know about the collection of information for advertising and Google's affiliation with YouTube.

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"Google catches us in an invisible web of our personal data without telling us and without asking us for our consent. This has been ongoing since 2012 and we hope our patience will no longer be tested," chairman of the Dutch Data Protection Authority (DPA), Jacob Kohnstamm, said in a statement.

Google has until February 2015 to change the privacy policy in the Netherlands to reflect the DPA's request. A Google spokesperson said "we've recently shared some proposals for further changes with the European privacy regulators group and we look forward to discussing with them soon."

The DPA will also investigate Facebook's change in privacy policy, which allows the social network to use photos for commercial uses. Facebook announced the change a few months ago, and it may come to Instagram soon.

This is not Google's first run in with European regulators. The European Competition Commissioner has been working on antitrust cases for the past four years against Google, due to its search dominance.

The European Parliament also vetoed a move to split Google's search business from the main company. It is unclear if the European Commission will look further into this issue.

Separate countries in the E.U. also have problems with Google. The U.K. recently created a new "Google tax", made to stop U.S. companies from moving U.K. profits overseas, to pay less corporate tax.

The Spanish Newspaper Publishers' Association announced Google would have to pay licensing fees for putting news stories on Google News, forcing Google to remove the news aggregator from the country.

Analysts claim all of these current regulations will not have a large affect on Google, especially since most do not have a negative effect on Google's overall revenue.

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