Google Appeals Against French Privacy Ruling

Google and the French privacy watchdog are at loggerheads over a controversial ruling, that resulted in $112,000 penalty on the search engine giant, in March this year. The fine came only after Google refused to take down links that were supposed to direct French netizens to download copyrighted material. And it seems that there is no let off.

This time around, Google has filed an appeal seeking to overturn the ruling. The search engine giant holds the point of view that the organization’s operations are in full compliance of the European Union (EU) regulations about privacy.

According to a statement, made during an interview, David Price, Senior Product Counsel, said, “This is a debate about the principles of international law that regulate the Internet globally,” David Price, a senior product counsel at Google, said in an interview. “One nation can’t make the laws for another country”, he added.

But the French privacy regulator, dismissing Google’s claim, is of the opinion that the American firm does not comply to the provisions of the EU privacy law. Google was also found in violation of ‘right to be forgotten law’ – a controversial legal provision, approved two years ago in 2014.

It is interesting to note that Google’s annual revenue stands at $875 billion. And the fine is just a paltry sum of the revenue. But the appeal by Google hints that the company is not really happy with the ruling, and seeks to draw firm boundaries about what constitutes a privacy breach, and what doesn’t, across the globe.

The controversial ‘right to be forgotten’ ruling provides the necessary powers to the individual netizens, living in the European Union region, to ask search engines, like Google and Bing, to remove links that direct other users to their personal information. The only thing European netizens need to do, is to inform the search engines that the information to be removed, is no longer relevant to them.

Google holds the point of view that all the links were removed, as per the provisions of the European privacy law, but the French regulator holds firm that Google should pay the penalty or face legal consequences.

It is to be noted that Google is still engaged in a legal battle on two other fronts in European Union. The fact remains that the legal battle is going affect the search engine giant’s reputation – at least in the European Union region.