Google pays $22.5m to settle Apple charges

Google was not required to admit to any liability, and the settlement does not constitute an admission of wrongdoing.

It was the largest penalty ever placed on a company for violating an FTC order, yet the fine is a drop in the bucket compared to Google's second-quarter revenue of $12.21bn.

"The Commission has allowed Google to buy its way out of trouble for an amount that probably is less than the company spends on lunches for its employees and with no admission it did anything wrong," said John Simpson, privacy project director for the nonprofit Consumer Watchdog.

The group said unless Google admitted to violating the FTC order, it planned to try to block the settlement, which needs court approval.

Still, revelations of the privacy misstep embarrassed Google. David Vladeck, director of the FTC's Bureau of Consumer Protection, acknowledged the penalty may seem small, but said it sends a clear message to protect privacy in the future.

"We have Google under order for another 19 years ... and if there's further violations, one could anticipate that the Commission would insist on increasingly higher civil penalties," Vladeck said on a call with reporters.

Google also must disable the tracking cookies that ended up on Safari users' computers and devices after visiting websites in Google's DoubleClick advertising network, despite assurances they would not be tracked due to Safari's default settings.

Elsewhere in Silicon Valley, Yahoo! said that it may re-evaluate plans for the cash it gets from a multibillion-dollar sale of half of its 40pc stake in Chinese Internet company Alibaba Group.

Yahoo!, which hired new chief executive Marissa Mayer last month, said in a filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission today that Mayer has started a review of the company's strategy.

The filing said the review "may lead to a re-evaluation" of Yahoo!'s previously announced plans to return to shareholders substantially all of the after-tax cash proceeds under the initial share repurchase from the May 2012 deal with Alibaba.