Google was fined 150 million EUR for not having a simple "refuse all" button in their consent nag. A single button. The complaint was that refusing is not as easy as accepting all cookies.
150M EUR is relatively small compared to Google's wealth, but so is the infraction. And they can't just write it off as a cost of doing business and continue the violation, because they were given a deadline to fix it and from there on a penalty of 100k EUR per day. Actually I don't have the data to do the maths but I seriously doubt Google's practice of making of you click a few times instead of once can make them 100k EUR per day in profit. And if it did, I'm sure the authorities would eventually increase the fine.
Assuming the fine results in compliance, it really doesn't look like a joke to me.
> The complaint was that refusing is not as easy as accepting all cookies.
How many other websites violate this rule and are allowed to get away with it for 4 years now (GDPR went into effect in 2018)? How many businesses are based on denying users their privacy rights? TrustArc's entire business is to provide an obnoxious, non-compliant consent popup as a service.
The Google ruling is a welcome development but doesn't invalidate the fact that enforcement is still very much lacking.
Google was fined 150 million EUR for not having a simple "refuse all" button in their consent nag. A single button. The complaint was that refusing is not as easy as accepting all cookies.
150M EUR is relatively small compared to Google's wealth, but so is the infraction. And they can't just write it off as a cost of doing business and continue the violation, because they were given a deadline to fix it and from there on a penalty of 100k EUR per day. Actually I don't have the data to do the maths but I seriously doubt Google's practice of making of you click a few times instead of once can make them 100k EUR per day in profit. And if it did, I'm sure the authorities would eventually increase the fine.
Assuming the fine results in compliance, it really doesn't look like a joke to me.