Google Begins Removing Search Results Following “Right To Be Forgotten” Decision
Tuesday 1 July 2014 @ 11.25 a.m. | IP & Media
Google has begun removing search results in the wake of the European Union Court of Justice (CJEU) verdict that controversially upheld the “right to be forgotten”. The decision in Google Spain SL, Google Inc. v Agencia Espanola de Proteccion de Datos (AEPD), Mario Costeja Gonzalez was a major success for privacy advocates who believe that people should be able to protect their identity on the internet.
However, critics warned it could substantially impact the right to free speech, and potentially affected "data controller" companies were concerned about the cost and difficult of implementing the concept in practice.
A Google spokesman told ABC News that
“This week we're starting to take action on removals requests that we've received… This is a new process for us. Each request has to be assessed individually and we're working as quickly as possible to get through the queue.”
Google received 41,000 requests to have information deleted in just four days via a web form request system it implemented. According to the Wall Street Journal, the effort has required Google to hire a dedicated “removals team”. The CJEU ruling requires there to be a “balancing public interest defence against deletion, especially if the individual is involved in public life”, meaning every request must be considered against the public interest. It is not clear from the ruling when information should be in the public interest, what the public interest is and what “public life” actually involves, meaning Google is operating in a fairly grey legal area. Another issue is that the judgment only applies in Europe, meaning results can still be accessed from its non-European based website, including the US-based www.google.com.
The Wall Street Journal has reported that Yahoo and Microsoft (the owners of Bing) are also currently working on complying with the court ruling.
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