A couple of weeks ago I wrote a blog discussing the court battle Google was facing in Europe. The case against Google was that people have the “right to be forgotten” online. This was definitely a tricky case considering there would be so many potential issues from multiple angles on this topic. And it appears we will start seeing how these complications play out, as it was recently announced that Google was on the losing end of this case.
So with that said, European citizens can literally request information to be removed from the search engine if it is deemed “inadequate, irrelevant or no longer relevant,” as this was stated by Mashable earlier today. How does this process work? It is actually quite simple. Google has created an online form for users to submit the URLs they want removed while also providing an explanation to validate their request. Google has stated in their online form that “in implementing this decision, we will assess each individual request and attempt to balance the privacy rights of the individual with the public’s right to know and distribute information.” Here is what the form looks like.
There is a catch here though. Once Google approves a certain piece of information to be removed, it will just be removed from the EU version of the search engine. It will still be available on Google.com. So you could almost argue that this whole process is quite useless to a certain degree. What are your thoughts on this? Is the European court laying out the blueprint for Google to be censored entirely? Or is this whole thing really not a big deal?
