Google circumvented settings on the browser in iPhones and iPads to plant advertising tracking cookies. Photograph: Marcio Jose Sanchez/AP
Google is paying $17m to 37 US states and the District of Columbia as compensation for snooping on millions of people by subverting Apple's web browser in 2011 and 2012.
The settlement, announced on Monday evening, follows a record $22.5m fine handed out to the search giant in August 2012 over the same complaint by the US Federal Trade Commission.
The settlement came after Google admitted in 2012 that it had circumvented protections built into Apple's Safari browser on the iPhone, iPad and Mac to track users via its DoubleClick advertising network.
Apple's default settings ban sites which users have not visited from setting "cookies", small text files with information about the user and site, on their machine. Cookies can act as unique identifiers of a user; if two unrelated sites used DoubleClick for advertising - as many do - and a Safari user went from one to the other, their movements could be tracked by Google.
Google admitted that it had carried out the hacking of the Safari browser in February 2012, but did not admit liability, the same position that it adopted with the FTC. This was important in that judgement because an admission of liability could have left Google subject to a much larger fine on the grounds that it breached a previous FTC consent order over user privacy. That was imposed in March 2011 over its "Buzz" social network and will be in force for 20 years.
Google has maintained the Safari intrusion was an inadvertent side-effect of an attempt to make it easier for people to recommend ads.
Until the problem was uncovered by Jonathan Mayer, a graduate student at Stanford University, Google had assured Safari users that they wouldn't be monitored as long as they didn't change the browser settings to permit the tracking.
"Misrepresenting that tracking will not occur, when that is not the case, is unacceptable, as this settlement emphasises," Wisconsin Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen said.
"We work hard to get privacy right at Google and have taken steps to remove the ad cookies, which collected no personal information, from Apple's browsers," the company said in a statement. "We're pleased to have worked with the state attorneys general to reach this agreement."
The settlement will be divided among the participating states and the District of Columbia.
The states' rebuke is primarily a PR blow to Google, whose privacy controls have suffered other lapses in recent years. The most glaring privacy breach came when a Google engineer installed a program which enabled Google cars collecting pictures of street scenes to also scoop up personal data being transmitted over unprotected Wi-Fi networks. That led to a $7m fine from 38 US states and the District of Columbia, while the Federal Communications Commission fined it $25,000 for obstructing its investigation into what happened.
The latest settlement will barely dent Google's finances. After stripping out the company's advertising commissions, Google's revenue this year is expected to be about $47bn, according to analysts surveyed by FactSet. That suggests it would take Google slightly more than three hours to generate $17m in revenue on an average day.
Besides paying the fine, Google also is agreeing to maintain a special page devoted to cookies for the next five years and refrain making any misleading statements about its online tracking practices.
via apple - Google News http://news.google.com/news/url?sa=t&fd=R&usg=AFQjCNFrg1g4BkbfDTVsYpmdt2HWyreEnQ&url=http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/nov/19/google-pay-17-million-apple-tracking
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