Monitoring Desk
BERLIN: Germany’s antitrust regulator on Wednesday denounced the way Google handles users’ data and threatened action.
Data gathered by Google was used to create very detailed user profiles, which the company can exploit for publicity, advertising, and other purposes”, said the Federal Cartel Authority.
Based on a preliminary assessment, the regulator determined that users were not provided sufficient clarity on the “far-reaching processing of their data across services” by Google.
The watchdog said that general and indiscriminate data retention is not permissible without offering users a choice.
Google business model
Therefore, the Federal Cartel Authority was “currently planning to oblige the company to change the choices offered,” it said. It added that it expected to issue its final decision this year.
“Google’s business model relies heavily on processing user data,” said the authority’s chief Andreas Mundt.
The digital giant had “access to relevant data gathered from a large number of different services,” which meant it enjoyed “a strategic advantage over other companies,” Mundt said in a statement.
Google said it would continue its “constructive dialogue” with the Authority “to address their concerns.”
The warning comes after Google was classified as a company of “paramount significance across markets” in 2021.
