- Google has been fined €403 million ($462 million) for misusing European users’ location history and web browsing activity.
- The Irish DPC, acting on behalf of the EU, said Google stores users’ location data, violating the GDPR.
- It also said the data could have been used for targeted advertising or to influence users’ decisions.
Google hasn’t had a particularly rewarding 2026, and its legal troubles don’t seem to end. In July 2026, the European Court of Justice held that Google had violated its dominant position by pushing its own services and reserved its previous judgment in the landmark antitrust case, along with a penalty of $4.67 billion. Later that month, the European Commission fined Google close to $1 billion for allegedly violating the Digital Markets Act (DMA). While this was followed by some relief from previously suggested extreme measures in the United States vs. Google lawsuit regarding its monopoly in digital ads, Google has now been hit with another fine of close to half a billion dollars.
Google has now been fined €403 million ($462 million) by the Irish data privacy watchdog Data Protection Commission (DPC) for allegedly mishandling data related to users’ location history. The DPC, acting on behalf of the European Commission, said that Google infringed on the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) by:
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