The relatively-new GDPR rules go on causing a headache for American companies. Facebook / Meta is mentioning leaving Europe completely while Google is constantly being found guilty of its several services, such as Fonts.
Not sufficiently regulated
Google’s legal officer Kent Walker has asked for better transparency on the GDPR rules just three weeks ago, after being found guild by the Austrian court for its Analytics service. The company and the exact service have been found guilty once again; this time the ruling came from the French regulators. The National Commission on Informatics and Liberty (CNIL) has ruled that the is not sufficiently regulated and violates the GDPR rule related to transferring personal data to other countries.
CNIL has published its decision after investigating the service. According to CNIL, the data transfer from Europe to Google servers in the United States is currently not regulated properly and it causes risk for French citizens.
« Although Google has adopted additional measures to regulate data transfers in the context of the Google Analytics functionality, these are not sufficient to exclude the accessibility of this data for US intelligence services. There is therefore a risk for French website users who use this service and whose data is exported.
Regarding website audience measurement and analysis services, the CNIL recommends that these tools should only be used to produce anonymous statistical data, thus allowing for an exemption from consent if the data controller ensures that there are no illegal transfers.
The CNIL has issued other orders to comply to website operators using Google Analytics. »
GDPR rules dictate internet companies respect the personal data of European citizens. The companies that violate might be fined and those fines can go up to 10 million euros or even higher; like 1&1 was fined 9.8 million euros at the end of 2019.
Will European citizens win or lose?
As the frequency of the GDPR rulings targeting big internet companies increases, it is becoming clear Europe has serious concerns about the outgoing personal data of the citizens. At one point American companies will need to concede transferring data and that point is getting closer every day. For the European users, the results might either be a total win; controlling the whole personal data, or cause losing access to handy tools such as Google Fonts.