France fines Google over privacy violations and makes it put a notice on its site

The French data protection authority CNIL has fined Google €150,000 ($204,000) over its unified privacy policy, which regulators believe violates European privacy law.

CNIL said Google’s merging of its various services’ privacy policies into a unified policy was in itself legal, but the way in which it implemented that unified policy was not legal. Specifically, the regulator said, Google did not inform its users enough about how their data would be mixed and matched between the various services, such as Gmail and Google Maps, nor why this data was being combined in this way (hint: advertising). If this sounds familiar, that’s because it’s almost exactly what the Dutch regulator and a Berlin court said in November. The European Union data protection authorities are coordinating their anti-Google efforts -- Spain became the first to levy a fine last month, relieving the company of $1.2 million.