Google isn’t disputing the facts of the FTC’s new complaint that Google violated the privacy of users of Apple’s Safari web browser (the default browser on all Apple products) by dropping stealthy advertising cookies, but Google isn’t admitting to any privacy violations, either. In fact, Google is trying to write the whole issue off as a misunderstanding on the FTC’s part.
An expensive misunderstanding, given that Google has agreed to pay a $22.5 million fine, the largest in FTC history against a single company. As a Google spokesperson said in a statement provided to TPM:
We set the highest standards of privacy and security for our users. The FTC is focused on a 2009 help center page published more than two years before our consent decree, and a year before Apple changed its cookie-handling policy. We have now changed that page and taken steps to remove the ad cookies, which collected no personal information, from Apple’s browsers.
