Five billion dollar fine faces of Google. The world’s largest search engine is accused of secret personal data gathering. American Corporation comes to violations is not the first time.
a class-action lawsuit against the holding Alphabet, which includes Google, filed in Federal court in California. According to Reuters, the plan is to collect about 5 thousand dollars for each user.
the Illegal collection of data was conducted using the statistics service, advertising Manager and other apps installed on smartphones. The information was received even in browsing mode. But, according to the company, the data collection depends not only on the search, but the site where the person is. Experts believe that the parties come to a settlement agreement. If the company and will pay a fine, it is unlikely that it will be too large.
“the California law contains a much lower level of compensation for the violation of the law regarding the collection and processing of data, — says Andrei Mironov, a lawyer on intellectual property. They are limited to the amount of 750 dollars for each user. But if the damage caused to this collection, is exceeded, it is possible to claim compensation for this damage. And Google will pay some compensation, but it is unlikely to be too high.”
the reason for the interest to the personal data is money. A large part of revenues comes from advertising. 165 billion dollars earned last year, this direction brought the search engine 135 billion. Detailed information about users, their interests and locations and movements — all this increases the effectiveness of advertisements.
Every second on Google is several million search operations that ultimately enhance financial performance. So the capitalization of the company is now too high to this news and the size of the claim affect its financial performance.
“At the end of 2019 on accountx they had $ 19 billion of the cache, the total capitalization of a trillion dollars, — says Alexei Antonov, managing Fund Capital Algalon. Even if the claim was fully satisfied, which I highly doubt, it can not affect the market capitalization, profits and everything else.”
the American Corporation regularly receives complaints from other countries. For 3 years three times, the European Commission fined Google more than $ 9 billion for abuse of dominant position in the market of search engines and online advertising, and restrictions on pre-application for smartphones with Android operating system. All the fines the company appealed. Some of them are still pending at the European court. However, the system was amended in order to avoid new claims.
Dissatisfied with the actions of American corporations and the local regulators of EU countries. Last year the company agreed to pay to the French authorities about a million euros for tax fraud. With regard to smaller claims, which the company too much, as a rule, IT-giants often ignore them, hoping that eventually they will lose relevance, and the state will not dare to use severe measures. According to experts, losing customers, they are also not too afraid.
“Google is in control today 82 percent of all search queries in the world — said Merenkov Nikolay, the partner Mozhenkov-Consulting. — People have the option to switch to other search engines to get rid of such risks, but there is no guarantee that other companies will not use the data also.”
At home Google, in the US, a search engine is also a suspect in the creation of a monopoly in the advertising market. Prosecutors the 50 States launched a massive investigation and intend to thoroughly test all business lines of the Corporation.
