Google Under Fire in Brazil

Google's Brazilian division may potentially be the focus of a 61 million dollars fine from the local authorities. This could be the case as the Mountain View Company has refused to share user data with the government as part of a criminal investigation.

In this context, Brazilian prosecutors have asked permission to debut legal action against the US search giant. Orkut, the Brazilian unit of Google, will come in the spotlight of a civil lawsuit that seeks a financial penalty of $61 million and to be dissolved if it will not comply with the request to hand over user data. Google representatives have stated that the Mountain View Company has cooperated with the judicial authorities, and has even complied with revealing user information, as part of past official investigations. Orkut however stated that its databases are on Google servers and that it does not possess the user information required of it.

Brazilian prosecutors from the Sao Paulo office have alleged that an array of Orkut community pages have centered organized criminal activities and that the social networking services were also used to promote child pornography.