Ireland's Data Protection Commission has fined Google €403 million over its location-tracking activities and given the company six months to bring its practices in line with the EU's GDPR, according to the European Consumer Organisation, BEUC. The decision lands close to eight years after consumer groups across Europe first challenged how the company tracked where its users go.
The complaint dates to November 2018, when eight consumer organisations from Norway, the Netherlands, Greece, the Czech Republic, Slovenia, Poland, Sweden and Denmark, coordinated by BEUC, filed complaints or reports about Google's location tracking. The case rested on research from the Norwegian consumer organisation Forbrukerrådet, a BEUC member, which described how Google used deceptive design, misleading information and repeated prompts to push Android users into allowing continuous tracking of their movements.
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Google changed its platform globally after that first complaint, but BEUC and several of its members filed a second complaint in 2022 because they judged the problems with deceptive design had not been sufficiently resolved. The regulator's order now requires compliance within six months.
BEUC argues the sensitivity of the data is what makes the case significant. Location records can expose religious beliefs, health conditions, political opinions or sexual orientation, the organisation said. Its Director General, Agustín Reyna, called the decision good news for consumers because it holds Google accountable and confirms the illegality of how the company obtained consent to use people's location data.
Reyna also criticised the pace of the process. "The time needed to come to this conclusion is disproportionate with the seriousness of the infringement," he said, adding that "late enforcement can be as harmful as no enforcement at all". He said Google had tracked hundreds of millions of European consumers for years, and that location data reveals details such as where children go to school, how often someone visits a hospital, or a place of prayer.
Separately, Google has kept revamping its consumer products this year. In June, Google began taking its rebuilt Google Finance out of beta, adding AI-powered portfolio tracking and a dedicated Android app, with an iOS version planned for later in the year. That rollout followed an April expansion of the AI-powered Finance platform to more than 100 countries with local-language support.
What the announcement does not address is how Google will change its consent screens or tracking defaults to satisfy the six-month deadline, or whether the company will appeal the decision. BEUC's position is that the outcome, while welcome, took too long to arrive for the seriousness of the infringement it describes.
