Post Privacy Warning Says Google

Hello everyone, I am bringing you the most recent new about google. Well google has forced many of it's sites to posting privacy. I'mean now google has placed their stamp, seal at some places where it was missing, or has told to authorities to place as quickly as possible. 

The Google logo is seen at the Google headquarters in Brussels, on March 23, 2010.

Source: Mashable

French netizens visiting Google France began seeing an unusual message on the search giant's usually bare homepage on Saturday. The message informs users that Google has been fined 150,000 euros (around $200,000) for violating French privacy laws.

France’s Commissions Nationale de l’Informatique et des Libertés (CNIL) imposed the fine, and the obligation to post the notice, in January. The decision (French) ended a probe into Google's privacy policy change, implemented by the company in 2012, when all its services' privacy policies were unified into one. After the change, Google combined user data across its different services like YouTube or Gmail.

The CNIL found that the policy didn't give users enough control over their private information, and didn't do a good enough job of explaining exactly what Google can do with that data.

Google is appealing the fine, and asked a French court on Thursday to suspend the order to post the notice in the meantime, arguing that it would cause "irreparable damage" to its reputation. But the court rejected the last-minute attempt to avoid the public shaming and ordered Google to follow through with the order, as reported by The Wall Street Journal.

As a result, the visitors of Google.fr are seeing the following message.

A screenshot of the Google homepage in France, taken on Feb. 8, 2014.

[Translated] Statement: The sanctions committee of the Commision Nationale de l’Informatique et des Libertés has ordered Google to pay a €150,000 fine for violations of the ‘Data-Processing and Freedoms’ law. Decision available at the following address: http:www.cnil.fr/linstitution/missions/sanctionner/Google/.

To avoid any attempt by Google to skirt the spirit of the order by complying with a small "fine print" message, the CNIL even came up with the text of the notice, as well as the size of the font, the position on the homepage and the colors of the message.

This is the first time a European country has ordered Google to post such a notice, but the company has been under the microscope of European countries for years. In April of last year, six countries, including France, opened separate investigations into the company's privacy policies.

On the bright side, Google recently took an important step toward avoiding a $5 billion fine in a three-year-long antitrust investigation by tentatively settling with the European Commission.