Google’s business model is based on illegal, exploitative practices that violate consumers’ privacy rights. Google goes to great lengths to illegally obtain as much of its users’ personal data as possible to support its advertising business, which in 2023 generated approximately USD 238 billion in revenue. Google’s outsized profits come at the expense of consumer privacy. Its practices constitute illegal surveillance and illegal exploitation of personal data, with unknown impact on the personal lives of its users now and in future. Stichting Bescherming Privacybelangen finds Google’s disregard for its users’ privacy rights unacceptable and is therefore taking legal action against Google. The Action is supported by the Consumentenbond.
Google is the most dominant data company in the world and almost impossible to avoid. Google is offering useful and practical products and services to the public, such as Google Search, Google Chrome, Gmail, Google Maps, YouTube, and smartphones with an Android operating system. Although the products have become an essential part of our daily lives, that does not justify illegal surveillance.
Google’s consumer tracking takes place on an unprecedented scale – collecting personal data from all consumers who use its products and services. This includes data on location and online activity, which Google collects regardless of selected preferences. Moreover, Google uses what are known as ‘dark patterns’: design techniques that manipulate users into taking actions that negatively impact their privacy rights, such as unknowingly granting access to their personal data. Google aggregates the personal data it collects to build detailed profiles of consumers’ lives, which it uses to derive products and services it sells to third parties to feed its advertising business. Google also transfers personal data outside of the EU, including to the United States, without sufficient protection from surveillance by the American government.
See for instance the video of the Norwegian Consumer Group, confronting three Norwegians with their location data: https://www.consumentenbond.nl/acties/zeker-online.
No consent
Google claims that users like you have ‘consented’ to Google’s vast and intrusive collection of personal data. But this purported ‘consent’ is contrived. Users like you are not given a truly free choice in determining exactly what data may and may not be processed by Google once Google collects it.
Google also makes it nearly impossible to understand what it is doing with your personal data. The ways Google uses your per-sonal data as a product happens invisibly behind the scenes. For example, your personal data is shared with hundreds of third parties if Google sells an ad targeted to you.
All in all, Google’s illegal ongoing surveillance of its users violates their right to privacy and the democratic freedoms that they secure. Privacy and freedom from surveillance are long-established Dutch and European rights laid down in the law and constitute the basis for democratic rule. These fundamental rights preserve the freedom to live and develop independently without being tracked, watched, or manipulated.
Accordingly, Google acts unlawfully and in violation of Dutch and European consumer and data protection law. Specifically, Google’s practices violate applicable privacy laws (such as the Dutch General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)) and cookie laws. In addition, Google’s practices constitute an unfair trade practice: users are being misled and in any event not informed properly about Google’s actual practices. Also, Google has been unjustly enriched.
Google must fundamentally change its practices to stop violating the rights of its users and the law.
To do this, Google must do at least the following:
- drastically change its digital infrastructure by applying effective privacy by design. This means implementing specific technical and organizational measures in Google’s systems so that the processing of users’ personal data is limited to what is strictly necessary and otherwise meets the requirements of applicable laws and ends Google’s illegal surveillance;
- if Google does not introduce adequate safeguards, it must stop misleading its users and inform them what specific data Google is collecting, what Google (and any third parties) are doing with it, and with whom Google is sharing all that information;
- establish a legitimate basis for processing personal data. Google currently makes it impossible for users to legally consent to its practices, including the commercial exploitation of their data. Users cannot possibly understand what Google does with their data. But at the same time, because of Google’s dominant position, users have virtually no choice but to use Google’s ubiquitous products and services; and
- stop transferring users’ personal data to the United States without sufficient safeguards against government surveillance.
The Foundation is committed to protecting Google users’ right to privacy and ensuring that Google will no longer compromise this right when it collects, processes, stores, and transfers personal data derived from the use of its products, tools, and services.
The Action is directed against the Google entities Alphabet Inc., Google LLC, Google Ireland Limited, and Google Netherlands B.V. (jointly “Google”). In the Action, the Foundation represents the interests of (current and former) consumers residing in the Netherlands who have used Google’s products and/or services at any time since March 1, 2012, and have suffered damages as a result of Google’s violations of Dutch and European consumer and privacy laws. Visit Aggrieved Parties to read more about whom the Foundation represents in the Action. You can also read the Articles of Association of the Foundation.
The purpose of the Foundation is to put a stop to Google’s ongoing illegal surveillance of Dutch consumers and commercial exploitation of their personal data. In this regard, the Foundation filed a lawsuit against Google on September 12, 2023 before the District Court of Amsterdam, after a collective settlement with Google proved impossible.
The lawsuit focuses both on Google’s past and present unlawful conduct. The Foundation aims to stop Google’s illegal practices and to obtain compensation for the damages suffered by Aggrieved Parties because of Google’s violations of Dutch and European consumer and privacy laws.
On 12 September 2023, the Foundation initiated legal proceedings against Alphabet Inc., Google LLC, Google Ireland Limited and Google Netherlands B.V. (“Google”) before the District Court of Amsterdam. Read the extract of the writ of summons for more information. Click here for the joint press release from the Foundation and the Consumentenbond.
On 12 December 2023, another foundation, Stichting Massaschade & Consument (SMC), also initiated legal proceedings against Google. That lawsuit also alleges privacy violations, but is limited to consumers who used an Android phone as of 25 May 2018 (see FAQ).
On 1 May 2024, Google filed written defenses on formal issues and asked the court to declare the Foundation inadmissible in its claims.
On 22 October 2024, the first hearing in these proceedings will take place at the District Court of Amsterdam. This hearing will address whether the Foundation has met the formal requirements necessary to conduct these proceedings against Google.
For more answers, please review the FAQ about thise action against Google.