A few weeks ago I told you that Google is going to be fined by the American authorities for violating Safari's privacy settings and now the fine has been confirmed by the FTC. Those from Reuters say that the FTC officials have already approved the entire documentation that will be officially sent to Google, who will probably not contest it and will pay it in full. Those from Google admitted that they did not respect Safari's privacy settings, but they claim that they did not save users' personal data or other confidential information.
US regulators will require Google Inc to pay a civil penalty of $22.5 million to settle charges that it bypassed the privacy settings of customers using Apple Inc's Safari browser, two people familiar with the matter said on Tuesday. Members of the Federal Trade Commission voted to approve a consent decree that will allow Google to settle the agency's investigation but admit no liability, said one of the sources, who was not authorized to speak on the record.
Although Google will pay the fine and has stated that it will respect Safari's privacy settings, it is hard to believe a company that has made a reputation for collecting all kinds of data about users. It will be interesting to see how things will evolve in the future and what changes Google will make, but it is not excluded that in the future other problems of this kind will appear.
