EU regulators demand strict data protection from Google

A co-ordinated move by regulators of six European countries aims to threaten Google to pay several million euros if the company doesnt address its data privacy issues within three months.

“Time is running out for Google to get serious about data protection,” Viviane Reding, the EU’s top justice official in charge of bolstering the bloc’s data protection rules, said on Twitter.

At the moment, EU commission is limited on posing fines but a new data protection regulation could be adopted later this year which would give them power to issue sanctions up to 2% of companys annual global turnover.

Another criticism towards Google is triggered by companys policy to gather privacy rules under one umbrella. It means that every time a user agrees to a privacy rule for one service this can be used by Google for other services. The tech giant is arguing that those policies are only working in interest of their users and are not used against them.

The outcome of Google fight with EU regulators will be followed by other US technology companies such as Microsoft and Facebook, which would also be concerned about the huge personal data they are dealing with.

Consumer protecting advocates have stated content of the regulators work but noted that there is still more to be done to watch over companys privacy standards.

“Today’s announcement on Google’s privacy policy is a welcome first step towards protecting consumers, but we believe the combination of user data goes far beyond individual consumers,” said Jeff Gould, President of SafeGov, a US-based NGO (non-governmental organization) advocating for high security standards cited by Financial Times.