Sara Forden for Bloomberg:

Google Inc. (GOOG) is negotiating with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission over how big a fine it will have to pay for its breach of Apple Inc. (AAPL)’s Safari Internet browser, a person familiar with the matter said.

Google ran into trouble when it was discovered that the company had bypassed Apple’s Safari security settings to plant cookies to track what Web pages users were looking at. Google hasn’t denied the claim, but it says that the cookies were not used to track personal information. The action indicates that Google allegedly violated the terms of a consent decree it signed last year.