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Regulators also found the company failed to be lawful, fair and
transparent when it processed personal data in its Location
Accuracy feature in the Android mobile operating system.
Ireland is the lead regulator for Google in the 27-nation EU
because the U.S. tech giant's European headquarters is based in
Dublin.
The investigation, which opened six years ago, examined how
Google applied the EU privacy rule book, known as the General
Data Protection Regulation, from the time it took effect in 2018
until February 2020.
“This case centers around historical policies that have since
been updated," Google said in a statement. "From 2019 onwards,
we’ve significantly evolved our practices and launched robust
tools that make managing location data simple.”
Regulators said that location data is a type of personal data
that's collected by Google and can be used to infer someone's
location.
“Location data can bring both benefits and harms to
individuals,” Deputy Commissioner Graham Doyle said. "It can
greatly enhance the utility of online services, but it can also
reveal a significant amount of information about an individual,
including information that is inherently private."
It's the fourth biggest EU privacy fine issued by the Irish
watchdog, which has previously handed out bigger fines to TikTok
and Meta, including a 1.2 billion euro fine for Meta.
The regulator said it still has three other ongoing privacy
investigations involving Google.
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