Brandon Bailey reports:
A federal judge said Friday that she’s inclined to approve a legal settlement in which Google (GOOG) agreed to pay $22.5 million to resolve federal allegations of privacy violations, despite objections from a consumer group that argues the penalty is too weak.
The Federal Trade Commission had touted the penalty, negotiated last summer, as the largest fine it has ever assessed in a case of this kind. The settlement stems from allegations that Google’s advertising service used software “cookies” to track the web pages visited by people who used Apple’s (AAPL) Safari web browser, without their knowledge.
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