Google's 'new' privacy policy, launched a little over a year ago, is still causing headaches in Europe. But a new pan-European investigation into the policy may cause greater troubles for the search giant.
The French data protection authority, the Commission Nationale de l'Informatique et des Libertes (CNIL), said today that the search giant has failed to respond to its requests to make changes to its controversial privacy policy and has handed the case to European member states to deal with the matter locally.
The U.K., France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the Netherlands were first involved in the examination of the new privacy policy — which merged around 60 different policies for Google's various products and services into one single policy.
In doing so, it could open Google to multiple fines at a local level in the coming months and quarters, once each authority has concluded its own investigation into its privacy practices.
Speaking to ZDNet, the U.K.'s Information Commissioner's Office said that an investigation had been launched and was in its early days. An ICO spokesperson said the organization would determine whether or not Google's year-old policy breaches the U.K. Data Protection Act.
Due to the ongoing investigation, the ICO declined to comment further.
The ICO can serve a maximum £500,000 ($758,000) fine against a company that breaches U.K. data and privacy laws. Each data protection authority would have to enact their own fines separately and maximum fines vary by region.
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