Germany to limit Google's data sharing between services

Bundeskartellamt last week announced it has opened an administrative proceeding against Google, due to Google’s data processing terms across multiple Google services.

The decision may impact Google’s capabilities of measurement and targeting, as less data is being collected for advertising purposes.

Germany’s national competition regulatory agency says Google is combining a variety of data from various services and uses them to create very detailed user profiles which the company can exploit for advertising and other purposes. This gives Google a strategic advantage over other companies.

Google’s services collecting data include Search, YouTube, Google Play, Google Maps, and Google Assistant.

Bundeskartellamt wants that users using Google can limit the processing of data to the specific service used. Bundeskartellamt says right now, the choices are not sufficiently transparent and too general.

Bundeskartellamt expects a final decision to be issued in 2023.