A federal judge Friday approved the terms of a settlement between the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and Google by which the internet giant will have to pay a fine of $22.5 million for improperly planting cookies on Apple's Safari browser.
According to the settlement, Google would pay a fine and expire the cookies without admitting wrongdoing, A Bloomberg report said. The fine was a part of the settlement agreement that Google reached with FTC three months ago on a complaint that it breached privacy settings rules on Apple software to have a track of users' online activity and show them personalized ads, the Los Angeles Times reported. The $22.5 million fine is the biggest the federal agency had ever levied against a company for a civil violation.
"My preliminary view is to grant the request to approve the [terms of the settlement," Judge Susan Illston at the hearing, which was at the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California in San Francisco.
The complaint claimed that Google duped millions of Safari browsers by providing them a false assurance that their online activities couldn't be tracked by the company. This commitment from the search engine was posted on Google's website earlier this year even when it was inserting computer coding that enabled it to monitor the online lives of the browsers.
Meanwhile, advocacy group Consumer Watchdog opposed the ruling and accused that it lets Google off too easily. It argued that Google should have admitted wrongdoing as part of the settlement. "We were disappointed, but think we made important points that will have an impact on how similar cases are dealt with in the future," John Simpson, director of the Consumer Watchdog Privacy Project, was quoted in LA Times.
