Closure of the injunction against GOOGLE

Background information

On 1 September 2025, in addition to the fine totaling 325 million euros, the restricted committee – the body of the CNIL responsible for issuing sanctions – ordered GOOGLE LLC and GOOGLE IRELAND LIMITED to comply on two points within six months. The companies had to:

• provide sufficient information to enable users located in France to understand that cookies with an advertising purpose will necessarily be deposited when they create a Google account;
• obtain the consent of the users of the Gmail message before displaying advertisements in the form of emails inserted between users’ private emails.

Failure to comply with those orders exposed the companies to a penalty payment of 100,000€ for each day of delay.

The decision

In view of the reply given by GOOGLE LLC and GOOGLE IRELAND LIMITED, the restricted committee decided to close the proceedings on 23 September 2026.

The companies completed the Google account creation path by adding information specifying that the creation of a Google account is conditional on the deposit of advertising cookies, in return for the service being free of charge. They also changed the format of the announcements presented in Gmail so that they are now clearly distinguishable from the actual emails. In this case, obtaining consent is no longer necessary under Article L. 34-5 of the Postal and Electronic Communications Code.

On the basis of those factors, and in view of the scope of the injunction, the restricted committee considered that the companies had complied with the requests within the prescribed period. However, that closure decision relates only to the scope of the order issued by the restricted formation in its resolution of 1 September 2025. This closure thus does not prejudge the CNIL’s analysis of the compliance of the entire Google account creation path with all the provisions of Article 82 of the French Data Protection Act, in particular as regards the clarity of the information provided and the intelligibility of the screens which are successively presented to the user. The CNIL therefore reserves the right to carry out further investigations in the future and, if necessary, to mobilise its entire enforcement chain.