Europeans bombard Google with delete requests

Tech giant Google says it has removed over 170,000 links since a European high court ruling earlier this year required search engines to take down "inadequate, irrelevant, or no longer relevant" materials from search results when requested by European Union (EU) citizens.

In its latest Transparency Report filed on the 9th this month, the company says it has received approximately half a million such delete requests and has removed about 42% of them.

The report said that Google evaluates a request by checking whether the results included outdated or inaccurate information about the person in question. It said, "We’ll also weigh whether or not there’s a public interest in the information remaining in our search results — for example, if it relates to financial scams, professional malpractice, criminal convictions or your public conduct as a government official (elected or unelected)."

The report further stated that the company's removals team has to scan each page individually and base decisions on the limited context provided by the requestor and the information on the webpage. They also consider whether it is a news story or related to criminal activities (convicted or not).

"Some requests turn out to have [been] made with false and inaccurate information," Google said, further stating that they had to rely on the requestor for information without assurance beyond the requestor themselves as to its accuracy.

The company provided a few examples: the links about a woman's husband's murder were removed as they included her name. However, a financial professional, who asked that links reporting his arrest and conviction for financial crimes be removed, was denied.

The European Court of Justice ruled in May that European residents have the "right to be forgotten". The plaintiff in the case was a Spanish man who said this right was violated by Google's display of a 1998 story about a forced property sale that he used to pay off personal debts.

by Kevin Andrews

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