The above mentioned actions go way back in time at the end of 2011 and were only discovered in 2012. In the US alone Google had to pay around $18 millions in individual U.S. states as fines. FTC also ordered the company to pay $22.5 million. Google representatives commented that giving consumers the right to sue it was not necessary with this recent British ruling. In the end the users did not suffer any financial harm. Despite this the British Court of Appeals ruled the following:
“Google, a company that makes billions from advertising knowledge, claims that it was unaware that was secretly tracking Apple users for a period of nine months and had argued that no harm was done because the matter was trivial as consumers had not lost out financially.
The Court of Appeal saw these arguments for what they are: a breach of consumers’ civil rights and actionable before the English courts. We look forward to holding Google to account for its actions.”
A great part of the company’s revenue comes from advertising. There are many users who want no part into this although they use services from Google everyday. Such users install anti-tracking software and even ad blockers. For them seeing Google trying to go around what they do in order to still track them is a little evil and this is contrary to what Google really stands for.
