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.”
.Is $22.5 Million a Big Enough Penalty for Google?
