“Google has already started to see a stream of new requests to be digitally ‘forgotten,’ following a ruling by the European Court of Justice on a complaint by a Spanish man seeking to have results related to his name and a property closure removed from the search engine were successful,” Darrell Etherington reports for TechCrunch.
“It’s not a good sign for Mountain View; these requests could quickly become a big new headache for the search provider to deal with, especially if these initial requests are representative of what’s to follow,” Etherington reports. “Critics of the decision, which include Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales and numerous anti-censorship and free speech organizations, say that the ruling has too much potential for abuse, and give leverage to those who would see information suppressed from public view.”
“Also related to the ruling, Google has said it will implement a mechanism for the public to make such requests in just two weeks time, according to Germany’s privacy protection authority,” Etherington reports. “That indicates that while the search engine described the result of the European court’s ruling as disappointing earlier this week, it’s moving quickly to implement a means to comply with its implications in EU member countries. Overall, this looks like it has the potential to snowball into a huge headache for Google, which already deals with millions of link removal requests per week due to copyright violations. ”
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Top European court: Google must remove links to personal material under certain circumstances – May 13, 2014