90 million Euro fine against GOOGLE LLC
No way to reject cookies as easily as to accept them on www.google.fr and www.youtube.com.
| fineID | Date | Fine | Recipient | Country | Infringement | href | Land |
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Fine details
The French data protection authority CNIL launched an investigation against the internet company after several data subjects complained about the inconvenience of rejecting cookies on the websites www.google.fr and www.youtube.com.
During its investigation, the CNIL found that although the websites offered a button to accept cookies immediately, they did not have an equivalent solution (button or similar) that allowed users to reject cookies just as easily. That is, several clicks were required to reject all cookies, although it only took one click to accept them all.
In the CNIL's view, such a comparatively complicated rejection mechanism was aimed at discouraging users from rejecting cookies and instead encouraging them to accept them due to the easy accessibility of the "I accept" button. The CNIL considered this to constitute a violation of freedom of consent and, consequently, a violation of Article 82 of the "Informatique et Libertés" law, as it was not as easy to reject cookies as to accept them.
The level of the fine was aggravated by the fact that many users were affected by the infringement, that Google's advertising revenue indirectly depends on the data collected through cookies and that the recipient of the fine had already been made aware of the infringement by the CNIL in February 2021.
GOOGLE IRELAND LIMITED was also fined EUR 60,000,000 in the same fine proceedings. GOOGLE LLC and GOOGLE IRELAND LIMITED were also ordered to provide users in France with the possibility of rejecting cookies as easily as accepting them within three months. If the deadline is exceeded, the companies face a penalty payment of EUR 100,000 per day.
