The French data privacy watchdog CNIL has fined Google 100 million euros and Amazon 35 million euros for breaching national legislation on internet cookies - pieces of data which track users' activity online.
According to an official statement, the tech giants were punished "for having placed advertising cookies on the computers of users ... without obtaining prior consent and without providing adequate information".
According to the watchdog, the banners, displayed on the sites did not provide clear information for the user on how cookies work and how to refuse them.
This is not the first time the French authorities have targeted digital corporations with major fines. Last year, France demanded that Google pay around $1 billion to settle a fiscal fraud investigation, and later fined the company €150 million for its anti-competitive activities.