Australia has a population of 25 million, so it's very unlikely that they have 60 million users.

The product in question is Android, 15 million is probably a reasonable guesstimate and nicely divides to $4 per user. Still not a ton, but not quite as low as you're suggesting.

FTA: The ACCC’s best estimate, based on available data, is that the users of 1.3 million Google accounts in Australia may have viewed a screen found by the Court to have breached the Australian Consumer Law.

Hmm so roughly 27 USD per user over the 2 year period in question, or US$13.50 per annum per user.

Roughly how much revenue (and profit) does Google make per Android user per year through targetted ads, etc (over and above e.g. an iPhone user)?

60M / 1.3M = au$46.15 = us$32.85

Splitting hairs but by the time I noticed you'd done a currency conversion (which had made me think your number was way off) I figured might as well be accurate.

Edit: while being pedantic, I'll also point out that halving for a "per annum" amount doesn't really make sense considering the estimate of 1.3M users is ones who "may have viewed a screen found by the Court to have breached the Australian Consumer Law" during the two years, not who were exposed to two years worth of anything.

Facebook was making $50 per user before apple crippled them, so I would assume Google makes at least that much

This occurred in Australia, Australia uses Australian Dollars. Thus they are not being fined USD, they are being fined AUD. USD does not have anything to do with this discussion whatsoever.

Google makes less profit from an Android user than an iPhone user. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2012/mar/29/google-ea...

Lol the truth hurts!

Oops, read over that, thanks :)

> so that is why companies keep on doing this

Google already stopped this, so which companies are you referring to?

This fine is only for Australia, and Google has had to pay billions in fines globally, which is not cheap and has changed their data collection practices. The suggestion that fines aren’t working isn’t accurate.

Just give them some time, this happens every 3 years.

Does it? Mind passing along some links to demonstrate the pattern?

It feels like government agencies and companies have found a spot where the fines aren't too much for companies to stop but enough for government to be financed. It's not about deterrence but about mutually beneficial arrangement.

Doubtful they have 60 million users in Australia for a lot of reasons. Also $60,000,000 isn't damn cheap.

Or because these are two different apps and users don't actually find this confusing. The same thing happens on iOS. You can toggle location usage for Google search and location history in Google Maps.