Google hit with $806M in penalties from US and French authorities over privacy issues
Thursday, 4 September 2025 ()
In an unprecedented day of privacy enforcement, Google was hit with $806 million in combined penalties on Wednesday as authorities on two continents delivered a coordinated blow to the tech giant’s data collection empire.
The dual actions signal what analysts call a turning point in global privacy enforcement — the end of Big Tech’s ability to treat regulatory oversight as fragmented and manageable.
Within hours of each other, a San Francisco jury ordered Google to pay $425 million for deceiving users about privacy controls, while France’s data protection authority CNIL slapped the company with a separate $381 million (€325 million) penalty for inserting ads in Gmail and manipulating cookie consent.
“This is a turning point,” said Sanchit Vir Gogia, chief analyst and CEO at Greyhound Research. “Regulators on both sides of the Atlantic struck in parallel. It was less a coincidence and more a sign of maturity: privacy infractions are no longer being dealt with in isolation but amplified through transatlantic echo.”
*Five years in the making: the $425 million verdict*
The San Francisco verdict caps a legal saga that began in July 2020 when smartphone user Anibal Rodriguez discovered Google was still harvesting his data despite disabling “Web & App Activity” tracking. His complaint grew into
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