When Corporate Fines Become Permission Slips: The Google Privacy Verdict
The news hit this week that Google copped a $425 million fine for collecting user data despite privacy controls being in place. My first reaction? A weary shake of the head and a muttered “here we go again.” The more I read about it, the more frustrated I became - not just with Google, but with our entire approach to holding tech giants accountable.
The discussion threads I’ve been following are filled with the predictable mix of outrage and resignation. Someone pointed out that this fine represents roughly 0.7% of Google’s 2023 profit of $60 billion. To put that in perspective, if you earned $100,000 last year, this would be equivalent to a $700 fine. Would that stop you from doing something lucrative but legally questionable? Probably not.
This is where my frustration really kicks in. We’re essentially operating a system where massive corporations can budget for breaking the law. It’s like having a speed camera that issues $50 fines to millionaires - sure, it’s technically a penalty, but it’s really just the cost of convenience.
What really gets under my skin is how this plays out in practice. Google implements privacy controls that users trust, then allegedly continues collecting data anyway. Users think they’re protected, but their information is still being harvested. It’s a betrayal of trust on a massive scale, yet the consequence is what amounts to pocket change for a company of Google’s size.
The conversation keeps coming back to the same solution: personal accountability for executives. Instead of treating fines as a cost of doing business, we should be looking at criminal charges for the people making these decisions. When executives face the possibility of actual jail time, suddenly corporate behaviour changes remarkably quickly.
I’ve been thinking about this from my own professional background in IT and DevOps. In my world, if I knowingly implemented a system that violated user privacy or security protocols, there would be serious consequences - potentially including termination and legal liability. Yet somehow, when tech executives make decisions that affect millions of people’s privacy, they get to hide behind corporate structures while their companies write cheques.
The environmental parallel here is striking too. For years, companies could pollute with relative impunity because the fines were cheaper than proper waste management. It wasn’t until we started imposing serious penalties and personal liability that behaviour began to change. We need the same approach for digital privacy violations.
What particularly bothers me is that none of these settlements seem to require Google to actually delete the data they collected illegally. Users don’t see a cent of compensation, and the company gets to keep the fruits of their privacy violations. It’s like being caught stealing, paying a small fine, but getting to keep what you stole.
The discussion around breaking up big tech monopolies keeps surfacing, and I understand the hesitation. Nobody wants to see thousands of workers lose their jobs because of executive decisions. But there has to be a middle ground between destroying companies and letting them operate with complete impunity.
Perhaps the answer lies in graduated penalties that escalate rapidly. Start with substantial fines that actually hurt, then move to executive liability, and finally to structural remedies if the behaviour continues. Make it clear that repeated violations will result in increasingly severe consequences.
The current system treats privacy violations like parking tickets for billionaires - an inconvenience, not a deterrent. Until we change that dynamic, we’ll keep seeing the same cycle: violation, fine, shrug, repeat. Our digital privacy is worth more than that, and it’s time our legal system reflected that reality.
The tech feudalism future that someone mentioned in the discussions feels uncomfortably close to reality. We’re allowing a handful of companies to accumulate unprecedented power over our digital lives, then slapping them on the wrist when they abuse it. That’s not sustainable, and it’s not the kind of digital future I want to leave for my daughter’s generation.