Stefan Mileschin

Watch kangaroo comes the raw prawn on the back of search engine's unfair dinkum

Australia’s competition regulator search engine outfit Google of misleading consumers to get permission for use of their personal data for targeted advertising.

In court documents, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) accused Google of not explicitly getting consent or properly informing consumers of a 2016 move to combine personal information in Google accounts with browsing activities on non-Google websites. It is seeking a fine “in the millions” and wants to establish a precedent.

Commission chairman Rod Sims, said: “This change ... was worth a lot of money to Google and we allege they’ve achieved it through misleading behaviour.”

The change allowed Google to link the browsing behaviour of millions of consumers with their names and identities, providing it with extreme market power, the regulator added.

“We consider Google misled Australian consumers about what it planned to do with large amounts of their personal information, including internet activity on websites not connected to Google”, Sims said.
https://fudzilla.com/news/51240-google-mislead-aussies