France fines Google, Facebook combined €210 million over cookie tracking

Both companies have three months to adapt their methods for cookies rejection

French data protection authority CNIL has fined Google and Facebook a combined €210 million (about £176 million) for making it too difficult for users to reject cookie tracking.

In a statement published on Thursday, the watchdog said the google.fr, youtube.com, and facebook.com did not allow the easy refusal of cookies compared to how easy it was to accept them.

"The restricted committee, the body of the CNIL responsible for issuing sanctions, has noted, following investigations, that the websites facebook.com, google.fr and youtube.com offer a button allowing the user to immediately accept cookies," CNIL noted.

"However, they do not provide an equivalent solution (button or other) enabling the Internet user to easily refuse the deposit of these cookies. Several clicks are required to refuse all cookies, against a single one to accept them."

This practice affects users' freedom of consent, according to the CNIL, and constitutes an infringement of the French Data Protection Act.

As a result of this infringement, the CNIL's restricted committee issued a €150 million fine (about £125 million) against Google, while Facebook was slapped with a €60 million fine (about £50 million).

The CNIL has also ordered both firms to provide Internet users located in France with a means of rejecting cookies as simply as the existing means of accepting them, within three months.

Failure to do so will fetch fines of €100,000 per day, CNIL said.

Cookies are text files a browser stores on a computer when visiting a website. Although these files are designed to speed up users' web browsing, they can also be used to identify a system and monitor users' online activities without their consent.

Web cookies are often used by third party advertisers, who can target a user with personalised adverts after seeing the different websites they visited.

In a statement to The Guardian, a Google spokesperson said that the company would change its practices in accordance with the decision.

"People trust us to respect their right to privacy and keep them safe. We understand our responsibility to protect that trust and are committing to further changes and active work with the CNIL in light of this decision."

A spokesperson for Facebook's parent company, Meta, said: "​​We are reviewing the authority's decision and remain committed to working with relevant authorities."

"Our cookie consent controls provide people with greater control over their data, including a new settings menu on Facebook and Instagram where people can revisit and manage their decisions at any time, and we continue to develop and improve these controls."

This is not the first time that French authorities have come down hard on the American tech giants.

In 2019, France's competition authorities issued a €150 million fine against Google over its mistreatment of advertisers using the company's AdWords service.

Also in 2019, CNIL levied a €50 million fine against the search giant over alleged breaches of GDPR.

Last year, Reporters Without Borders (Reporters sans Frontières or RSF) filed a lawsuit against Facebook in France for allegedly allowing proliferation of disinformation and hate speech on its platform. The global media watchdog alleged in the court filing that Facebook had failed to provide a safe online environment for users.

Meanwhile, Germany's antitrust watchdog this week put Google under closer antitrust scrutiny by designating it a company of "paramount significance", through new powers it has gained under an amendment of the German Competition Act.

"Since January 2021, we have a new instrument for supervising large digital corporations," said Andreas Mundt, who heads the Federal Cartel Office.

"After less than a year, we have now taken the first formal decision on the basis of this regulation and established that Google has a pre-eminent cross-market significance."

"This is a very important step since based on this decision the cartel office can now take action against specific anti-competitive practices by Google," he added.