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With the stipulation that the next time Google gets caught with their hand in the cookie jar the fine is automatically doubled, no questions asked, no negotiations, pure and simple, doubled! and then the 3rd time it is tripled and so on. Hitting them in the wallet just might send the appropriate message!

Come on now, Google just want everybody to be open.

johndrake, on 10 July 2012 - 07:37 AM, said:

The correct escalation should be 2x, 4x, then 8x then 64x. If the next step is 3rd time = 3x etc, there really isn't much incentive for a company that probably earned a few hundred million from their 'oops, did we do that?'

hagen, on 10 July 2012 - 08:07 AM, said:

You're right, 44M, or even 88M, would not send a strong enough message, I wasn't being hard enough in them!

hagen, on 10 July 2012 - 08:07 AM, said:

Except that Google would never agree to such terms, and if terms including an escalation of that nature were dictated to them by a court of law, then I would fully expect that to practically guarantee an overturn on appeal.

As it stands, Google may yet try to appeal this ruling -- that is, assuming that appeals are even an option for an FTC deal like this.

This post has been edited by zarmanto: 10 July 2012 - 08:29 AM

Until this behavior is criminalized, with jail terms for senior executives, it will continue. The man in the street steals a bottle of milk and he goes to jail. GOOG just does it again. The penalty is comical, and takes money from shareholders not from the perpetrators who continue to do evil, one day at a time, suffering no pay cut or incarceration.

So the FTC gets 22 million? What do I get as a user that was raped by this underhanded tactic? What do any of us get?

nmpike, on 10 July 2012 - 10:50 AM, said:

Time to file that civil action lawsuit!

nmpike, on 10 July 2012 - 10:50 AM, said:

Please tell me your tale of woe. You say you were "raped" by this so clearly you clicked on an ad with a Google +1 icon, otherwise you weren't affected. Which ad? Then you discovered an advertising cookie on your machine that contained no personally identifying information. I can only imagine how you must have been driven to the brink by this horrendous discovery!

Maybe you should also feel a little "raped" by Apple who care so little for their users' security that they neglected to implement the fix for this loophole that Google themselves had provided six months earlier? After all, this workaround had been widely used for two years - in Facebook apps, ads, etc. - to offer consistent behavior across browsers.

dazweeja, on 10 July 2012 - 07:21 PM, said:

What I am saying is that 22 million isnt anything to Google, and the users were the victims.. I could really care less about the do not track... and why should the FTC get to pocket the money?

nmpike, on 11 July 2012 - 07:58 AM, said:

The money will presumably go into the FTC budget to fund more investigations like this one, which seems like the most appropriate use for it.