The failure of Google to change its privacy policy in Europe has led six countries to coordinate an enforcement push.
The UK, France, the Netherlands, Germany, Italy and Spain have all launched investigations into Google’s net privacy and the penalties, if the corporation is found guilty are swingeing, amounting to millions of dollars.
The investigations centre around a decision made by Google at the beginning of last year to share data for services including YouTube and Gmail. The investigation was prompted by national agencies in all 27 countries in the European Union, which asked France to initiate an investigation.
Google maintains that its privacy policy doesn’t break European laws but in the middle of March investigators from the six countries met with executives and said there was not a satisfactory response from the company.
What the next step in the investigations will be is so far unclear – it appears that each of the six countries involved will have to approach Google separately because, according to the Wall Street Journal, there isn’t Europe wide legislation governing such matters.
