Australia’s competition watchdog announced on Friday that a court had dropped its complaint against Alphabet Inc.’s (GOOGL.O) Google, which claimed that customers had been misled about the increased use of their personal data for targeted advertising.
The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission filed the lawsuit in July 2020, alleging that Google changed its policy in 2016 to combine user activity on non-Google websites that use its advertising technology with personal information from their accounts. The company was accused of failing to obtain users’ explicit consent before making this change.
Although Google “only implemented the steps with their (users’) informed agreement,” the regulator said, the Federal Court concluded that the message that allowed users to accept policy modifications was not deceptive.
The court added that Google did not lessen account holders’ privacy rights.
A Reuters request for comment was not immediately answered by Google Australia.
