A federal judge has approved a $22.5 million fine to penalize Google for an alleged privacy breach, rejecting a consumer-rights group's plea for tougher punishment. The blessing from U.S. District Judge Susan Illston came late Friday. She made her ruling a few hours after a hearing in San Francisco for final arguments about a fine that's the cornerstone a settlement reached three months ago between the Federal Trade Commission and Google Inc. The rebuke resolves around allegations that Google duped millions of Web surfers using the Safari browser into believing their online activities couldn't be tracked by the company as long as they didn't change the browser's privacy settings. That assurance was posted on Google's website earlier this year, even as the Internet search leader was inserting computer coding that bypassed Safari's automatic settings and enabled the company to peer into the online lives of the browser's users.