Nationale de l'Informatique, France, revealed on Tuesday that there were legal flaws with Google’s new policies specifically the way in which search engine giant combines and uses anonymous data from users' browsing histories across its services to better target advertising.
Isabelle Falque-Pierrotin, CNIL president, said "If Google does not conform in the allotted time, we will enter into the disciplinary phase". The data regulators came up with 12 recommendations for the search engine giant, which if implemented, will bring its privacy policy in compliance with EU’s requirement. One such recommendation was to better inform users about the possible use of data that is collected and for how long the data will be retained.
The French watchdog has also written an open letter to Google' Larry Page. Google believes that its privacy policy is in line with EU law but, it will examine the results of the investigation none-the-less. Google has two options to go forward. It can either negotiate with the regulators and bring about the recommended changes or challenge the recommendations.
EU-wide sanctions are probably not an option as national data protection regulators of France, Belgium and Netherlands have individually imposed fines on companies that violated the law. Google has already been at the receiving end of separate cases when it was found that its Street View cards collected unauthorized data on public WiFi networks.
