Italian competition watchdog has recently launched a proceeding against Google, following a complaint that the said company has abused its dominant position on the market, by hindering personal data portability rights guaranteed to individuals under the provisions of the GDPR.

Background of the case

The subject complaint was filed by Hoda, the operator of a direct marketing platform Weople. Weople encourages its users to link their accounts registered with third parties (e.g., Gmail) to the said application, thus creating a “digital vault” which includes their personal data. The subject data are then “masked”, i.e., made anonymous, in order to be further used for targeting consumers with personalized advertisements, without disclosing the actual data to the advertisers. For using their personal data for marketing purposes, users of the respective app may obtain various rewards, even of a monetary nature.

Back in 2019, Italian authority for personal data protection investigated this app because of the previously described encouragement of transferring the personal data for using them for commercial purposes. In this regard, the EDPB (European Data Protection Board) suggested that entities which receive such request from Weople should assess and decide on it by considering the provisions of the GDPR, especially regarding the accountability.

Abuse of dominant position

As previously mentioned, this time Italian authorities are not investigating Weople’s operations, but the abuse of a dominant position allegedly committed by Google, on the basis of the complaint filed by Hoda in relation to the transferring of personal data for the needs of Weople app.

Namely, Hoda has accused Google of violating the competition, in which regard Italian antitrust authority passed a press release, according to which the investigation was launched considering that Google’s actions, i.e., limiting the personal data portability for the needs of Weople app could have an impact, i.e., compress the subject right guaranteed by the provisions of the GDPR, and thus constrain the economic benefit that consumers may achieve based on their personal data, as well as the competition on the market, since it thereby also limits the possibilities of competitors to develop innovative services based on data transmission.

This is, however, not the first time that Google is facing proceedings with respect to the violation of antitrust regulations. Namely, in 2021 this technology giant was fined USD 120 million due to restrictions applied to the JuicePass electric car charging app.

This article is to be considered as exclusively informative, with no intention to provide legal advice. If you should need additional information, please contact us directly.