Judge OKs $22.5M fine against Google for Safari tracking

It's looking like Google may have to soon cough up the $22.5 million fine it agreed to pay in order to settle Federal Trade Commission claims that it illegally bypassed user privacy settings in Apple's Safari Web browser.

U.S. District Judge Susan Illston approved the fine in San Francisco federal court late Friday, according to the Associated Press. This is the largest penalty the FTC has ever levied against a single company.

Google and the FTC reached the settlement agreement in August when the Web giant agreed to pay $22.5 million on charges that it "placed an advertising tracking cookie on the computers of Safari users who visited sites within Google's DoubleClick advertising network."

The FTC claimed that Google assured those users that they would be automatically opted out of the tracking because of Safari's handling of third-party cookies. However, according to the FTC, those users were not immediately opted out and therefore Google contradicted a 2011 privacy agreement it had ma... [Read more]