Google, the internet search giant, has been taken to court by the creators of the Brave Browser. The privacy focused software house has filed a complaint in the court that Google, the Ireland registered data and internet company unethically leverages its power by collecting user data. It does this privacy infringement through a wide range of its applications and devices that it allegedly uses to process for secondary purposes such as marketing without the user’s knowledge.
With new European regulation being enforced, technology companies are facing more and more difficulties in justifying their data-driven business models. Most of this data is obtained without explicit permission from the users themselves.
Article 51(b) of GDPR
Google and its parent company, Alphabet Inc, come under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) enforced in the European Union last year. The regulation explicitly makes it clear that companies are more than just responsible for protecting the user data they collect. Under the article 51(b) of the regulation, companies are limited to what they can do with the data they collect. The clause states the data,
“collected for specified, explicit and legitimate purposes and not further processed in a manner that is incompatible with those purposes”
Dr. Johnny Ryan the Chief Policy and Industrial Relations Officer of Brave Software Inc. says Google is in clear violation of the rule. He wants the regulators to take action against Google.
He said:
“Enforcement of Brave’s GDPR ‘purpose limitation’ complaint against Google would be tantamount to a functional separation, giving everyone the power to decide what parts of Google they chose to reward with their data”
Inside The Black Box
Brave has previously released a study titled “Inside the Black Box”, which dived into how data is processed and used by Google. The study claims it
“Examines a diverse set of documents written for Google’s business clients, technology partners, developers, lawmakers, and users. It reveals that Google collects personal data from integrations with websites, apps, and operating systems, for hundreds ill-defined processing purposes.”
It is no secret that buoyed by the implementation of the GDPR regulation, various privacy-focused startups are thriving and may seek to challenge the domination of these tech firms in the long-term by giving the customer the choice to give his/her consent to the storage and usage of data. Browsers like Brave are looking to get big companies like Google to face legal setbacks all the while offering better substitutes.
About Brave
Brave is a privacy focused browser that has a higher user data protection than any other major browser available in the market, including Google’s Chrome. An open source application, Brave let’s anyone view its coding to ensure that there is nothing suspicious going on in the back end. With built in blocking for ads and website tracking, it also supports the Basic Attention Token, a cryptocurrency that Brave users can send to websites and content creators. Brave browser is available for all major operating systems, including Windows, MacOS, Android, Linux and iOS.