Last year thanks to a ruling by the European Union, Google is now legally obligated to handle requests by users for the right to be forgotten, at least as far as Europe is concerned. Basically the idea behind the service is that sometimes some of us have our personal and private details splashed across the internet, so by having Google stop listing this in search results, it would allow these users to reclaim some of their privacy.Of course as we all know, what goes on the internet never truly goes away, but at the very least with Google removing it, it makes it harder. Last we checked Google had over 70,000 requests to handle ever since it went live, and according to an updated Transparency Report (via Engadget), that number has since jumped to over 250,000 with about 59% of the requests from users to be forgotten have been denied.
While Google does not specifically mention why they have chosen to accept or deny a user’s request, they have given some examples. One example in which they agreed to the user’s request reads, “An individual who was convicted of a serious crime in the last five years but whose conviction was quashed on appeal asked us to remove an article about the incident. We removed the page from search results for the individual’s name.”
An example in which they denied the request reads, “A high ranking public official asked us to remove recent articles discussing a decades-old criminal conviction. We did not remove the articles from search results.” From what we can tell, it sounds like Google tends to deny requests from those who have been publicly convicted, while those who have been absolved have their records cleared.
It is unclear if Google’s right to be forgotten will eventually make its way stateside or to other parts of the world, but in the meantime how do you guys think Google is doing so far with it?