Australia's competition watchdog announced on Friday that Google has been ordered by the country's Federal Court to pay A$60 million in fines for misleading users into collecting their personal location data, Reuters wrote.
The court has announced that Google misled some customers about personal location data collected through their Android mobile devices between January 2017 and December 2018.
"Google misled users into believing that setting "location history" on their Android phones was the only way to collect location data, when a feature to monitor web and app activity also allowed for the collection and storage of local data", said the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission.
The watchdog, which estimates 1.3 million Google account users in Australia may have been affected, launched proceedings against the company and its local unit in October 2019.
According to the regulator, Google took corrective measures in 2018.
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In an emailed statement, Google said the issue has been resolved and added that it has made location information simple to manage and easy to understand.
The search engine giant has been embroiled in legal action in Australia over the past year as the government considered and passed a law to force Google and Meta to pay media companies for content on their platforms.
