It would appear that Google's newly released Maps for Apple's iOS falls foul of European Union law. It's over an issue that might seem trivial but it's very important to both parties: both the EU and Google itself.
When users install Google Maps on their iPhone, the option to share location data with Google is switched on by default. By doing this, Google violates European data protection law, according to a German data protection watchdog.
European law (data protection is one of those legal areas which belongs to the EU, so the law is the same right across the bloc, not different for each country) is absolutely adamant about this. To he point of being paranoid in fact. If you are to give up any of your rights to data privacy then it must be an active choice to do so. It cannot just be the default option.
Google, or anyone else, cannot just say "click here to install and by the way, we'll be tracking your location data. Click here if you don't want us to track."
It must instead be "Click here to install. And click here if you want to allow us to track."
Not a big difference you might think. But the performance from an opt in system departs enormously from the performance of an opt out one. For most people just accept the default settings on anything: we know that from the ease in which people manage to hack into mobile phone voicemail systems. Very few people ever change the pin codes from the manufacturers' "0000". Even people who ought to know better rarely do.
As I say, the EU is adamant about this sort of thing.
And Google is very interested too. Advertising is how the company makes its money: this we all know. The most difficult part of advertising at present is on mobile. That's the next big thing people want to crack. And it's pretty obvious that the value of advertising is going to go up if you know the exact location of the mobile device. Someone searching for the location on Maps of a Chinese restaurant in Paris is a pretty good target for advertising restaurants in Paris to. People would pay goodly sums for that sort of slice of the market in fact.
But if it must be opt in, and most people don't in fact opt in, then Google's ability to sell such ads is diminished considerably. Which is why they made it opt out of course.
It's pretty easy for Google to change this. But they'd much rather not of course. And it does indeed seem, at first blush, to be illegal under those EU rules.
