Google has agreed to pay $60m in penalties flowing from a long-running court docket struggle with the Australian competitors watchdog over the misleading of customers on the gathering of non-public location data.

In April final yr, the federal court docket discovered Google breached shopper legal guidelines by misleading some native customers into pondering the corporate was not collecting private data about their location through cell gadgets with Android working methods.

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The case revolved round whether or not it was sufficiently clear Google would nonetheless accumulate and entry location data when a person’s location historical past was set to “off” however their net and app exercise was “on” and one in every of its apps was used.

The corporate was additionally discovered to be in breach of two different shopper legal guidelines regarding conduct liable to mislead the general public and making misleading representations about a service’s efficiency traits.

The Australian Competitors and Shopper Fee on the time referred to as the judgment a transparent message to digital platforms to be upfront with shoppers about what is going on with their data.

On Friday, a quick federal court docket listening to was informed a $60m penalty was agreed as “honest and cheap” between the events and {that a} joint submission had been submitted to Justice Thomas Thawley.

The court docket heard potential points nonetheless in play have been whether or not the penalty made future conduct “economically irrational” and if the penalty was appropriate.

Thawley stated he was glad the fine was in an acceptable vary and thanked the events earlier than adjourning the case till afterward Friday.