UK Wants Google To Remove Links To Stories About Removing Stories

As you might be aware, Google in Europe is entertaining “right to be forgotten” requests, where basically if it meets the requirements, Google will remove links about a particular person from its search results in a bid to give them privacy. Sounds good, right? However when Google removes these links, they also inform the websites who have been removed.

This in turn leads to more articles being written about these links that have been removed, essentially rehashing a topic that might have been really old to begin with. In a way it is redundant and this is something that the UK courts wants Google to stop. Basically the courts are asking Google to remove links in their search results that talks about links being removed.

Google argues that these results are considered to be of significant public importance and ought to be presented to whoever searches for it, but according ICO deputy commission David Smith, “We understand that links being removed as a result of this court ruling is something that newspapers want to write about, and we understand that people need to be able to find these stories through search engines like Google. But that does not need them to be revealed when searching on the original complainant’s name.”

The commission has since given Google 35 days to remove the offending links, but in the meantime Google is allowed to appeal it, but whether or not they will remains to be seen, but do you guys agree with the courts on this?

Tyler Lee
Categories: Web
Tags: Google, Legal, Privacy