Is $22.5 Million a Big Enough Penalty for Google?

It’s the largest civil penalty the Federal Trade Commission has ever imposed for violating one of its orders. But after the agency announced that Google will pay $22.5 million for overriding privacy settings in Apple’s Safari browser, skeptics quickly criticized the penalty as little more than symbolic for a company that had $2.8 billion in earnings last quarter. The Los Angeles Times called the settlement “a drop in the bucket.” CNN said it amounted to “financial wrist-slap.” Advocacy group Consumer Watchdog called it “woefully insufficient,” and in a statement of dissent, the FTC’s Commissioner J. Thomas Rosch said it is “a de minimis amount of Google’s profit or revenues.”