Google gets record fine over FTC charge of Safari tracking

— -- Google was slapped with a record $22.5 million fine Thursday to settle allegations it ran afoul of privacy pledges by surreptitiously following users of Apple's Safari Internet browser in iPads, iPhones and Macs with tracking cookies.

Tracking cookies are small pieces of data assigned to computers to ID and collect information on a consumer's Internet surfing habits and can be used to serve up targeted ads.

The Federal Trade Commission penalty is the largest against a company for violating a privacy agreement with the agency — and a major stake in the ground on consumer privacy. "This is the first purely consumer privacy enforcement," says James Kohm, associate director of enforcement for the FTC's bureau of consumer protection. "Having a record-setting fine like this is not a comfortable position for Google in terms of publicity."

The FTC alleges Google breached a consent decree reached last year over its ill-fated Buzz social effort. That action forbid the company from misleading consumers on privacy and put it under review for 20 years.

Later that year and into 2012, Google was found placing advertising tracking cookies on the computers of Safari browser users who visited sites served by the search giant's DoubleClick advertising network, the FTC alleges. Google did not admit to any wrongdoing. Google has "taken steps to remove the ad cookies, which collected no personal information, from Apple's browsers," the company said in a statement.

The search giant had previously told Safari users they would not be part of such tracking because of the default settings of the Safari browser used in Macs, iPhones and iPads. However, the FTC alleged Google managed to attach cookies in many cases by circumventing Safari's default cookie-blocking setting.

Google earns billions from Internet advertising and has a vested interest in such targeted ads online.

Google makes so much — $12.2 billion in revenue for the most recent quarter — that it will recoup the money for the fine "faster than NBC will air Olympic sports events," says Jonathan Yarmis, vice president of disruptive technologies for HfS Research.

Google has complied with the FTC by halting the practice of attaching tracking cookies when people visit sites in Safari. Also, Google has removed the "vast majority" of cookies from people's computers, according to the FTC's enforcement arm.

"Clearly something like this isn't even a slap on the wrist," Yarmis says. "This is just the cost of doing business."