GOOGLE LLC and GOOGLE IRELAND LIMITED

CNIL (France) case SAN-2021-023, decided 2021-12-31. EUR 150,000,000.

What the regulator decided

Cookies were deposited on the terminals of users visiting google.fr without their prior consent, and the consent interface did not offer an equivalent refusal control alongside the acceptance control at the first interaction; users had to navigate to a secondary panel to refuse, breaching the freely-given and equivalent-refusal limbs of Article 82 of the French Data Protection Act.

Primary source

Regulator-owned URL. Quote this in legal briefs and academic citations.

https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/cnil/id/CNILTEXT000044840062

Archived snapshot

Wayback Machine snapshot of the primary source. Use this when the regulator URL might be refactored or expire.

https://web.archive.org/web/20241230173721/https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/cnil/id/CNILTEXT000044840062

ConsentMark interpretation

Operator-readable note on how this case shapes the ConsentMark scanner narrative. Not a legal opinion; cites the primary source.

Fine split: EUR 90M against Google LLC + EUR 60M against Google Ireland Limited. Companion to SAN-2021-024 (Facebook) and SAN-2022-023 (Microsoft Bing). The 2025-09-01 Google decision (SAN-2025-004) is the follow-on under the same Article 82 framework.

Verification trail

Verified by: donal
Verified at: 2026-05-27
Review due: 2026-11-27

Cite this case

Pick the format that matches where you are pasting. The methodology version is preserved in every variant so the citation stays verifiable after future methodology changes.

BibTeX

@misc{consentmark-precedent-cnil-san-2021-023,
  author       = {{ConsentMark}},
  year         = {2021},
  title        = {CNIL (France) SAN-2021-023 - GOOGLE LLC and GOOGLE IRELAND LIMITED},
  howpublished = {\url{https://www.consentmark.com/precedent/cnil-san-2021-023}},
  note         = {ConsentMark methodology v1.3}
}

APA

ConsentMark. (2021, December 31). CNIL (France) SAN-2021-023 - GOOGLE LLC and GOOGLE IRELAND LIMITED. Methodology v1.3. https://www.consentmark.com/precedent/cnil-san-2021-023

Markdown

[CNIL (France) SAN-2021-023 - GOOGLE LLC and GOOGLE IRELAND LIMITED - ConsentMark](https://www.consentmark.com/precedent/cnil-san-2021-023)

Plain text

CNIL (France) SAN-2021-023 - GOOGLE LLC and GOOGLE IRELAND LIMITED - ConsentMark, 2021-12-31, methodology v1.3, https://www.consentmark.com/precedent/cnil-san-2021-023