French Privacy Agency’s Site Crashes, After Demanding Link From Google France Home Page

Be careful what you wish for. In this case, the French privacy agency CNiL demanded that Google link from the Google France home page to a privacy ruling made against it. Google complied — and now the traffic seems to have slowed and sometimes crashed the CNiL website.

Our story on Marketing Land has more about the statement that Google was ordered to post saying that it was found to violate French privacy rules: Google France Home Page Now Carries Privacy Violation Notice, As Ordered.

The story also covers that as part of the ruling, Google had to link to this statement on the CNiL website. But the French agency seems not to have anticipated just how much traffic such a link would generate. At times, several different site status services such as DownForEveryoneOrJustMe have found the site completely down:

At the time of this writing, the site’s responsiveness is sporadic. At times, I can’t get the statement or the site itself to load at all. At other times, both may load, just very slowly. Occasionally, there are no problems at all.

Here’s a look at the statement Google had to post:

Again, for more background on the notice, see our separate story on Marketing Land:

• Google France Home Page Now Carries Privacy Violation Notice, As Ordered