The US Federal Trade Commission has levied the highest single fine it has ever imposed, as a penalty for Google's behaviour regarding browser privacy settings.
Google has agreed to pay the $22.5M (£14.4M) fine for monitoring users that had their browsers set to block cookies.
A researcher from Stanford University originally spotted the problem when he realised that Google had found a way to deliver targeted advertising despite his browser settings having been set to block this. He discovered Google were able to use a loophole to place cookies on peoples machines that had been set to reject them although Google claim that the action of collecting private data was inadvertent.
The BBC has further detail on this story here.
