Google is taking on part of the United States government in court.
Specifically, Google is suing the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, per Reuters. The search engine company decided to take the federal consumer watchdog to court after the agency ordered supervision of Google Payment, the part of the company that handles, well, user payments. According to the CFPB, Google’s payment services carry risks for consumers, such as possible fraud and mistaken transactions.
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One angle worth noting is that Google actually shut down Google Pay earlier this year. That’s seemingly central to Google’s defense of its conduct here. According to the company’s complaint, “a product that no longer exists is incapable of posing such risk.” As such, Google doesn’t feel supervision (which would be similar to what is performed for major banks and other financial institutions) is needed.
Despite this, the CFPB feels that Google’s payment services could still pose a risk to customers, per TechCrunch. The CFPB is operating off of almost 300 customer complaints. Google may not have done anything wrong, but the CFPB clearly feels Google has done enough to warrant supervision, and Google isn’t a fan of that.
It’s also worth noting that all of this could go away as soon as Donald Trump takes office again in January, given his administration’s public friendliness with major tech figures.
