Google forced to advertise £125,000 fine on its French homepage after court rules search giant violated users' privacy

Online ads giant rapped for the way it stores and tracks personal data

Comes after French officials this week slapped firm with €1billion tax bill



Google has been told to inform its French customers that it must pay a £125,000 fine for violating their privacy.

France's data protection watchdog punished the online advertising giant for the way it tracks and stores users' personal information.

The fine is just the latest blow for Google in France, after the company was earlier this week hit with a €1billion tax bill from French tax authorities.

Communique: Google has been told to inform French customers it must pay a £125,000 fine for violating their privacy after France's data watchdog punished the firm over how it tracks and stores personal information

Privacy watchdog CNIL objected to Google's method of combining data collected on individual users across services such as YouTube, Gmail and social network Google+.

Google began moving toward the new storage model in March 2012 and combined 60 privacy policies into one, which was forced on users with no means to opt out.

The Silicon Valley firm - which has been heavily implicated in Edward Snowden's leaks about American and British online spying - said it would comply with CNIL's order but would keep fighting the €150,000 (£125,000; $204,000) fine issued last month.

Google last month appealed the watchdog's fine as well as the order to post a notice of the sanction on its google.fr homepage for 48 hours.

Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt: The fine comes after raids on Google's Paris offices led to officials slapping the firm with a 1billion-euro tax bill

Lawyers for the multi billion-dollar company specifically asked the Conseil d'Etat (Council of State), France's top administrative court, to suspend the order while it re-examines the case.

But judges ruled yesterday that there was not enough urgency nor proof of damage to Google's reputation to warrant a suspension. The fine and order come after raids on Google's Paris offices led to the company being slapped with a €1billion (£830million; $1.36billion) tax claim.

French financial inspectors searched the search engine's offices in June 2011 as part of an investigation into its accounting.



The company had sought to reduce the amount of tax it pays in France by channelling its revenue through a Dutch-registered intermediary and then to a Bermuda-registered holding, Google Ireland Limited, before reporting it in low-tax Ireland.

Socialist France is currently one of the highest taxed countries in the world.



Commenting on yesterday's privacy ruling, a Google spokesman told Reuters: 'We've engaged fully with the CNIL throughout this process to explain our privacy policy and how it allows us to create simpler, more effective services.

'We will comply with the order to post the notice, but we'll also continue with our appeal before the Conseil d'Etat.'