Google tries to ease tensions over new EU law

SAN FRANCISCO: Alphabet Inc’s Google sought to ease online publishers’ concerns yesterday about the effects European data privacy rules going live will have on their advertising business.

Under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the biggest overhaul of data privacy laws in over 20 years, organisations must have transparent justification for processing personal data, starting yesterday.

The rules threaten fines of as much as 4% of company revenues for violations, although attorneys and EU officials have cautioned there will be a grace period.

But that has not prevented an anxious scrambling this week as companies seek and interpret lastminute counsel from consultants, business partners and regulators.

Google officials, speaking yesterday to 70 media and advertising firms at its New York City office and on a private telecast, described compliance efforts as a work in progress and said the company would release additional tools to assist publishers in June and August, according to a person with direct knowledge of the discussion.

Internet companies that track users online, whether for shopping, banking or other reasons, are set to face significant scrutiny.

The new rules require they have specific justification, such as consent, for using personal data.

The worst case for Google and advertisers would be users refusing to allow sharing of their personal data. Some advertisements they encountered would no longer be personalised to their interests, and if clicked on less, could cut industry spending.

British attorney Gabriel Voisin, whose firm Bird & Bird has revised 500 online privacy policies over the past two years to check their GDPR compliance, said this week his team was still working overtime with 50 websites in ‘‘a flurry of lastminute adjustments’’.

Sovrn Inc, which has developed a permissiongathering tool that websites can use as part of GDPR compliance, said it had had a flurry of clients in the past week.

Though the GDPR has been a decade in the making, many businesses began detailing their compliance efforts only in the past month. In the online advertising industry, which Google dominates, the company’s interpretation has trickledown effects for partners such as publishers and small advertising companies.

Google now requires that online publishers obtain consent and take on legal risk on its behalf to track users online, a move it made in response to the GDPR that has proved unpopular with publishers. — Reuters