The French fine against Google is the start of a war

THE PRIVACY wars have begun in earnest. On January 21st France’s data-protection regulator, which is known by its French acronym, CNIL, announced that it had found Google’s data-collection practices to be in breach of the European Union’s new privacy law, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). CNIL hit Google with a €50m ($57m) fine, the biggest yet levied under GDPR.

Google’s fault, said the regulator, had been its failure to be clear and transparent when gathering data from users. Signing up for a Google account on an Android phone means navigating a sea of documents eight-clicks-deep to understand what data about you Google is collecting.