The privacy war on Google is only just beginning, and there are plenty of committed data protection advocates in Europe to make sure it doesn’t peter out. Getty
The privacy war on Google is only just beginning, and there are plenty of committed data protection advocates in Europe to make sure it doesn’t peter out. Getty
The privacy war on Google is only just beginning, and there are plenty of committed data protection advocates in Europe to make sure it doesn’t peter out. Getty
The privacy war on Google is only just beginning, and there are plenty of committed data protection advocates in Europe to make sure it doesn’t peter out. Getty

Europe's attack on Google shifts gears to two new fronts


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Despite its lobbying, Google can’t seem to win in Europe. The French privacy watchdog has blown through the US internet giant’s claim to comply with data-protection legislation, and its threat to pull its news-aggregation service in the region will likely prove far less effective than the company expects.

Google’s troubles with the European Union’s antitrust authorities are well-known: the company was fined 2.4 billion euros (Dh10bn) in 2017 for abusing its dominance in price-comparison services, and a further 4.3bn euros the following year for pushing software bundles on Android phone makers. Another antitrust probe, this time involving its AdSense advertising product, is under way.

But there are two more important areas where the European attack on Google is still in its infancy: Privacy and intellectual property. This is changing.

Monday’s decision by the French data protection agency, CNIL, is an important salvo on the first front – even if the regulator’s 50 million-euro fine is a rounding error compared with the $11bn of quarterly revenue Google’s parent, Alphabet, generates in Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

After Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation came into effect in May, 2018, tech giants such as Google, Facebook and others made a show of complying with the letter of the law, demanding consent from users for various data collection practices. But they never wholeheartedly complied with the GDPR’s key demand of privacy by design and by default.

It’s not easy for a user to opt out of being tracked. In June, the Norwegian Consumer Council, the country’s state-funded consumer protection agency, documented Google’s and Facebook’s efforts to discourage users from exercising their privacy rights.

The internet giants’ reluctance to comply was obvious to privacy advocates from the start. On May 25, a group calling itself “None of Your Business”, led by Austrian lawyer Max Schrems, filed a series of complaints to different European privacy authorities, seeking to strike down the companies’ practice of forced consent. The bureaucratic wheels turn slowly, but now the group and its French ally, La Quadrature du Net, have their first result.

So far, CNIL has only addressed one specific complaint against Google – that the process of creating a Google account, more-or-less essential to use an Android phone, rushes users through an opaque consent process instead of allowing them freely to choose understandable privacy settings. The watchdog ruled that consent obtained in this way isn’t sufficiently informed – nor is it specific or unambiguous. The user doesn’t really understand what data they have agreed to give up, and for what purpose.

Whether the CNIL decision will open the floodgates and GDPR rulings follow against other internet giants is uncertain. It requires courage for national data protection authorities to go head-to-head with a juggernaut like Google, which spends millions of dollars on lobbying, holds hundreds of meetings with EU officials, and can afford the best legal representation and the lengthiest trials.

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In France, CNIL head Isabelle Falque-Pierrotin is leaving her post at the end of this month and won’t face Google’s pushback. And as of Tuesday, the company is moving its entire European operation under the jurisdiction of the Irish data protection authority, which, as La Quadrature du Net notes, is “understaffed and drowning in complaints”.

It is, however, possible that activist privacy regulators in other European countries still will take on Google in coordination with the Irish authority. The privacy war is only just beginning, and there are plenty of committed data protection advocates in Europe to make sure it doesn’t peter out.

The intellectual property front is only just beginning to open up. European copyright rules that may force Google and others to pay for carrying snippets of copyrighted content – such as news stories – haven’t taken effect yet. It will be up to EU member states’ national governments to decide how tough they should be.

Google is trying to head off this threat by threatening to pull its Google News service from all of Europe, just as it did in Spain in late 2014 after that country passed legislation requiring Google to pay publishers.

The threat, however, isn’t likely to be effective. In Spain, studies found that the exit of Google News reduced traffic to smaller news sites, but not to the most popular ones, which saw more readers come directly to their landing pages. Even if one disregards the higher comparative lobbying power of bigger media outlets, news aggregation is a competitive business. Last year, as Facebook pulled back from news distribution, other services – including Google’s – and publishers’ own apps and landing pages quickly picked up the slack.

Publishers aren’t likely to miss Google News much if it leaves: The fundamental fact of their business is that people look for news, and they will get it from other sources, including aggregators more willing to share ad revenue than Google.

It’s no accident that Google is fighting these skirmishes, as well as a battle over tax, in Europe. The US behemoth’s way of doing business is incompatible with the region’s emphasis on satisfaction for all stakeholders.

I doubt that Google will be able to avoid changing its behavior in the long-term, just as Uber had to rein in its culture of fighting regulation. Google has a lot of money for damage control, but these attacks will keep coming. It may be comforting to see them as mosquito bites. But Europe can be an uncomfortably mosquito-infested place for even a thick-skinned elephant the size of Google.

Bloomberg

FFP EXPLAINED

What is Financial Fair Play?
Introduced in 2011 by Uefa, European football’s governing body, it demands that clubs live within their means. Chiefly, spend within their income and not make substantial losses.

What the rules dictate?
The second phase of its implementation limits losses to €30 million (Dh136m) over three seasons. Extra expenditure is permitted for investment in sustainable areas (youth academies, stadium development, etc). Money provided by owners is not viewed as income. Revenue from “related parties” to those owners is assessed by Uefa's “financial control body” to be sure it is a fair value, or in line with market prices.

What are the penalties?
There are a number of punishments, including fines, a loss of prize money or having to reduce squad size for European competition – as happened to PSG in 2014. There is even the threat of a competition ban, which could in theory lead to PSG’s suspension from the Uefa Champions League.

The specs: 2018 Nissan Altima


Price, base / as tested: Dh78,000 / Dh97,650

Engine: 2.5-litre in-line four-cylinder

Power: 182hp @ 6,000rpm

Torque: 244Nm @ 4,000rpm

Transmission: Continuously variable tranmission

Fuel consumption, combined: 7.6L / 100km

Benefits of first-time home buyers' scheme
  • Priority access to new homes from participating developers
  • Discounts on sales price of off-plan units
  • Flexible payment plans from developers
  • Mortgages with better interest rates, faster approval times and reduced fees
  • DLD registration fee can be paid through banks or credit cards at zero interest rates
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Conflict, drought, famine

Estimates of the number of deaths caused by the famine range from 400,000 to 1 million, according to a document prepared for the UK House of Lords in 2024.
It has been claimed that the policies of the Ethiopian government, which took control after deposing Emperor Haile Selassie in a military-led revolution in 1974, contributed to the scale of the famine.
Dr Miriam Bradley, senior lecturer in humanitarian studies at the University of Manchester, has argued that, by the early 1980s, “several government policies combined to cause, rather than prevent, a famine which lasted from 1983 to 1985. Mengistu’s government imposed Stalinist-model agricultural policies involving forced collectivisation and villagisation [relocation of communities into planned villages].
The West became aware of the catastrophe through a series of BBC News reports by journalist Michael Buerk in October 1984 describing a “biblical famine” and containing graphic images of thousands of people, including children, facing starvation.

Band Aid

Bob Geldof, singer with the Irish rock group The Boomtown Rats, formed Band Aid in response to the horrific images shown in the news broadcasts.
With Midge Ure of the band Ultravox, he wrote the hit charity single Do They Know it’s Christmas in December 1984, featuring a string of high-profile musicians.
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Live Aid was a series of simultaneous concerts that took place at Wembley Stadium in London, John F Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia, the US, and at various other venues across the world.
The combined event was broadcast to an estimated worldwide audience of 1.5 billion.

Real estate tokenisation project

Dubai launched the pilot phase of its real estate tokenisation project last month.

The initiative focuses on converting real estate assets into digital tokens recorded on blockchain technology and helps in streamlining the process of buying, selling and investing, the Dubai Land Department said.

Dubai’s real estate tokenisation market is projected to reach Dh60 billion ($16.33 billion) by 2033, representing 7 per cent of the emirate’s total property transactions, according to the DLD.

Our legal consultant

Name: Hassan Mohsen Elhais

Position: legal consultant with Al Rowaad Advocates and Legal Consultants

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Cast: Abhishek Bachchan, Taapsee Pannu, Vicky Kaushal​​​​​​​
Rating: 3.5/5

Key facilities
  • Olympic-size swimming pool with a split bulkhead for multi-use configurations, including water polo and 50m/25m training lanes
  • Premier League-standard football pitch
  • 400m Olympic running track
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Sole survivors
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UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
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Greatest of All Time
Starring: Vijay, Sneha, Prashanth, Prabhu Deva, Mohan
Director: Venkat Prabhu
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The biog

First Job: Abu Dhabi Department of Petroleum in 1974  
Current role: Chairperson of Al Maskari Holding since 2008
Career high: Regularly cited on Forbes list of 100 most powerful Arab Businesswomen
Achievement: Helped establish Al Maskari Medical Centre in 1969 in Abu Dhabi’s Western Region
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If you go

The flights

Fly direct to London from the UAE with Etihad, Emirates, British Airways or Virgin Atlantic from about Dh2,500 return including taxes. 

The hotel

Rooms at the convenient and art-conscious Andaz London Liverpool Street cost from £167 (Dh800) per night including taxes.

The tour

The Shoreditch Street Art Tour costs from £15 (Dh73) per person for approximately three hours. 

The National's picks

4.35pm: Tilal Al Khalediah
5.10pm: Continous
5.45pm: Raging Torrent
6.20pm: West Acre
7pm: Flood Zone
7.40pm: Straight No Chaser
8.15pm: Romantic Warrior
8.50pm: Calandogan
9.30pm: Forever Young

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Six tips to secure your smart home

Most smart home devices are controlled via the owner's smartphone. Therefore, if you are using public wi-fi on your phone, always use a VPN (virtual private network) that offers strong security features and anonymises your internet connection.

Keep your smart home devices’ software up-to-date. Device makers often send regular updates - follow them without fail as they could provide protection from a new security risk.

Use two-factor authentication so that in addition to a password, your identity is authenticated by a second sign-in step like a code sent to your mobile number.

Set up a separate guest network for acquaintances and visitors to ensure the privacy of your IoT devices’ network.

Change the default privacy and security settings of your IoT devices to take extra steps to secure yourself and your home.

Always give your router a unique name, replacing the one generated by the manufacturer, to ensure a hacker cannot ascertain its make or model number.