back to article Google tells French watchdog 'non' on privacy tweak halt

Google has rejected calls from the European Union's watchdog to delay imminent changes to the Chocolate Factory's privacy policy. The company's global privacy counsel, Peter Fleischer, wrote a letter to France's data protection authority in response to an earlier missive sent by the EU's Article 29 Working Party last week. " …

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  1. dotdavid
    Thumb Down

    A bit like

    ""At no stage did any EU regulator suggest that any sort of pause would be appropriate. Since we finished these extensive briefings, we have notified over 350 million Google account holders, as well as providing highly visible notices to all our non-authenticated users."

    Which is a bit like politely saying: "Tough luck, we're going ahead with this.""

    Actually it's a bit like saying "FFS, we told you this YEARS ago and NOW you have a problem with it?"

    I don't think Google are used to the, er, speed at which governments move.

    1. Matt 21

      So....

      If I wrote to the police and told them I intend to rob a bank and they didn't reply.... that would be OK? I'd pre-briefed them after all (not sure what pre-brifing is but there you go)

  2. N2

    pas problem

    google.tout = 127.0.0.1

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Typical!

    Just because you've expressed your views in advance to the authorities does NOT mean that a lack of response is a tacit approval.

    This attitude is akin to those who write EULAs and Terms&Conditions which after pages and pages of small print tell you that notwithstanding all of the above, your statutory rights are not affected.

    Of course they're not affected. You can write anything on a contract and pretend the other party is bound by it, but if it's illegal in the first place, even if the other party signs it, the contract is void.

    Thank god there are laws and regulation to protect the consumer

    I say, good for the EU and Vivienne to keep those corporations (not just Google) on their toes.

  4. BilboBobbins
    Black Helicopters

    https://ssl.scroogle.org/

    Google without the tracking / eavesdropping.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Dude, they already track you across multiple services. How did you think single sign on to Gmail / calendar / google+ / picassa / etc works? The change to the T&Cs is just admitting this.

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    And so the fuse is lit..

    .. under a large par of Google's EU business.

    Honestly, if Google management thinks it can just waltz over EU legislation (again) they really need to stop smoking crack. By going ahead they create two situations that are Very Bad News (tm):

    a - they create the (justified) impression they really don't care one flying banana about privacy, and think they can just pretend to be in the US. Net consequence: a VERY pissed of set of regulators (one per country, and the group in the EU trying to hold it together) who will be hell bent on dragging the morons into court instead of being nice and engaging in dialogue. Google could have prevented this from happening, but it decided to go all-out American. Well, duh if they get into trouble - it's almost like they are begging for it. Do no evil, yeah, right..

    b - they will put things in place they will have to roll back later, which is going to be a lot more expensive that doing it right in the first place. Not exactly smart either.

    There is really no need to feel sort for Google if they get hit over the head again, they've been asking for it. Maybe they got overconfident after they managed to successfully move the Streetview WiFi snooping to all Android equipped handsets without anyone complaining?

  7. Grease Monkey Silver badge

    The fact still remains that nobody is forcing anybody to use Google services. The best thing the EU can do is to issue advice to internet users that if they value their privacy they should avoid logging into Google.

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