Google is under scanner from European Union about the privacy law the company is presently having. Google, which is not particularly known for honoring privacy of the user, might be staring at a fine of 2% of its total global turnover which amounts to 1 billion dollars. The privacy law which came into existence from March 2012 allows the company to pull user data from many sources including the popular email service, Gmail and the video sharing site, YouTube. Voices could be heard from many directions right since then but till now Google has either played deaf to those or displayed its arrogance by saying “if you want to hide, don’t use Google services”. None of these were well received by the users. Sadly, the countries in the Europe, the officials didn’t like it either.
Till now, the biggest problem EU had was the absence of any centralized law or rules to handle these organizational misbehavior. While some countries did not have any rule to fine the companies, some other states had laws which are applicable only within the country. These fines were in absolute terms and varied from 3 million to 6 million Euros. The new law, which is in its last phase of drafting, will be applicable all over European Union and will charge up to 2% of the global turnover of the company. Viviane Reding, the chief legal officer of EU, admitted the inefficiency of the present system and said, the new law is going to change the game.
Google however maintains that they should not be subjected to any punishment and claims that they have changed the privacy policy since then. The American companies are lobbying hard to stop this new law as this will require strict and explicit permission from the end user on the usage of their private data. How much they succeed against a pretty determined looking EU is a different issue altogether.
This post has been contributed by IT Chimes – a web design company.
