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Google Loses Appeal, Forced to Publish €150,000 Fine on Google.fr

pcmag.com

11–20 of 33 posts

Re: Google Loses Appeal, Forced to Publish €150,000 Fine on Google.fr

#11
Funny thing: the French search engine Qwant currently displays a message with the exact same presentation and almost the same text on their front page. They just changed to text so it says that they have never been condemned for anything by the CNIL because they respect privacy.

Re: Google Loses Appeal, Forced to Publish €150,000 Fine on Google.fr

#12
post #7
post #4

I know PCMag is pretty hard up for...everything, these days, but a modal "sign up for our newsletter" box that doesn't have a close button is the worst thing I've seen in a while. (You can get out by hitting Escape, but that doesn't make it okay.)

Just use NoScript, no more newsletter shenanigans.

I usually just do a whois on the domain and put the admin contact email in. If that's already signed up, then retry using their nameservers' domain.

Re: Google Loses Appeal, Forced to Publish €150,000 Fine on Google.fr

#13
post #11

Funny thing: the French search engine Qwant currently displays a message with the exact same presentation and almost the same text on their front page. They just changed to text so it says that they have never been condemned for anything by the CNIL because they respect privacy.

Yeah.. but they are just using Bing in the background so it's not really a search engine, just another meta ones from the 90s which surviving thanks to gov. subsidies.

Re: Google Loses Appeal, Forced to Publish €150,000 Fine on Google.fr

#14
post #6
post #4

I know PCMag is pretty hard up for...everything, these days, but a modal "sign up for our newsletter" box that doesn't have a close button is the worst thing I've seen in a while. (You can get out by hitting Escape, but that doesn't make it okay.)

The modal box does have a close button. Perhaps your ad blocker is blocking the close button.

So it is. Which is one of the uglier fuck-you behaviors a company can pull.

(I make any web work I do work with or without an adblocker, because I don't own their browser.)

Re: Google Loses Appeal, Forced to Publish €150,000 Fine on Google.fr

#15
Would it be reasonable for, say, a car manufacturer to be forced to include a statement painted on the side of each car they sold for a period of time? Or a consumer electronics manufacture to have an apology statement on, say, a TV that gets displayed whenever you change channels? Something like that would severely damage their product. So why is it reasonable to require a tech company to deface their product? Now it wouldn't be as bad for some companies, where their main domain points to an information page, but the main page for Google is an application page, not a "web" page. This just feels like a bad precedent -- what happens when this is forced on another company, who's application front end isn't conducive to having arbitrary text on it (I'm thinking of like map programs, word processing, presentation apps, etc).

Re: Google Loses Appeal, Forced to Publish €150,000 Fine on Google.fr

#16
post #15

Would it be reasonable for, say, a car manufacturer to be forced to include a statement painted on the side of each car they sold for a period of time? Or a consumer electronics manufacture to have an apology statement on, say, a TV that gets displayed whenever you change channels? Something like that would severely damage their product. So why is it reasonable to require a tech company to deface their product? Now i…

It would be reasonable for a car manufacturer to include a statement on their website, even if it happened to include a search box.

Re: Google Loses Appeal, Forced to Publish €150,000 Fine on Google.fr

#17
CAUTION, THIS IS NOT TRUE. Google is appealing the sanction, and in the mean time they asked an emergency injunction ("référé") for not having to do the message part of the sanction waiting for the appeal (on the ground that if they win the appeal, their reputation would already be damaged by the message). The appeal has absolutely not been ruled.

The "emergency" judge simply declared that what they asked for was not following the specific emergency criterion (basically they didn't believe the irremediable damage part), and he simply let go the sanction for now. Another Court will actually judge the appeal itself. If they win the appeal, they get their money back, and some bragging rights.

here is the PR from the actual court: http://www.conseil-etat.fr/fr/communiques-de-presse/sanction...

Re: Google Loses Appeal, Forced to Publish €150,000 Fine on Google.fr

#18
post #15

Would it be reasonable for, say, a car manufacturer to be forced to include a statement painted on the side of each car they sold for a period of time? Or a consumer electronics manufacture to have an apology statement on, say, a TV that gets displayed whenever you change channels? Something like that would severely damage their product. So why is it reasonable to require a tech company to deface their product? Now i…

Actually French law has specific provisions for media companies. Like if there is a defamation, generally one of the sanction is a message taking the same size and spot as the defamation. In other cases, the sanction if to buy some ad space in the press to put the specific sanction message (for example, after defrauding the shareholders in a publicly traded company). In local nasty cases of defamation, it can just be a message in a local newspapers (like a shop defaming another through a sign or a nasty political fight).

edit: to really answer, there is what we call "individualization of the sanction", where the court decide what would make sense as a sanction inside a palette (and to answer by advance: if a court decides something, yes it's appealable).

Re: Google Loses Appeal, Forced to Publish €150,000 Fine on Google.fr

#19
post #14
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The modal box does have a close button. Perhaps your ad blocker is blocking the close button.

So it is. Which is one of the uglier fuck-you behaviors a company can pull. (I make any web work I do work with or without an adblocker, because I don't own their browser.)

It's taller than my fucking screen!

http://i.imgur.com/UrS04Xw.png

Re: Google Loses Appeal, Forced to Publish €150,000 Fine on Google.fr

#20
post #11

Funny thing: the French search engine Qwant currently displays a message with the exact same presentation and almost the same text on their front page. They just changed to text so it says that they have never been condemned for anything by the CNIL because they respect privacy.

'been in France for 35 years, I have never heard of them.
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