Ireland’s Data Protection Commission fined Google €403 million ($459 million) over its handling of users’ location data and gave it six months to comply with the EU’s GDPR. The inquiry covered location accuracy, location history, and web and app activity.
The inquiry, opened in 2020, examined practices from May 2018 to February 2020. The DPC said Google had not shown that location-accuracy processing met GDPR standards for lawfulness, fairness and transparency; it found the handling of data through location history and web and app activity was not lawful or fair. Location history logs places users opt in to save, while web and app activity records activity across Google services.
Google said the case concerned historical policies that had since been updated, and that from 2019 it had significantly evolved its practices and introduced tools to manage location data. The DPC said three other large-scale statutory inquiries into Google were at an advanced stage.
