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With just days before Google’s new unified user privacy policy comes into effect, the French data protection agency (CNIL) warned the internet giant that the policy was likely unlawful in Europe.
The French CNIL had been appointed as the lead investigator by Europe’s collective privacy commissioners following Google’s announcement that a myriad of individual Google service privacy policies would be condensed into a single policy.
Google said the simplified policy was "clear and transparent" but concerns have been raised that the policy makes it easier for Google to share user data across services for the purpose of offering more ‘customised’ advertising to users.
A letter to Google CEO Larry Page and posted on the CNIL website said: "Our preliminary analysis shows that Google’s new policy does not meet the requirements of the European Directive on Data Protection."
Google’s privacy boss Peter Fleischer said that the company was opposed to European calls for a delay for the introduction of the policy, pointing out that Google services have been prolific and obvious about notifying users of the upcoming changes.
"To pause now would cause a great deal of confusion for users," Fleischer said.
