Google Updates Right To Be Forgotten To Appease The EU

For those who are unaware, a couple of years ago Google launched a Right to be Forgotten program. Basically what this does is that it supposedly removes links in Google search to any articles or websites that might contain information about you that you would rather not have the public know.

Of course the information will always be there, but Google removing it should make it harder for it to be found. According to a recent report from Reuters, it seems that Google has made some changes in which they will now perform a wider scrubbing of links in a bid to soothe some of the objections that the EU had about the program.

Prior to this, links were only removed from the originating country, meaning that if you are from France, only links about you will be removed from Google France, but Google America or Google Japan can still find out about you, which is something that French privacy watchdog took issue with.

However with this change, this means that it doesn’t matter which version of Google’s search engine is used, as long as the search itself comes from the country the request originated from. This isn’t a particularly big change as we can imagine that using VPNs will easily circumvent the issue, but whether or not the EU will look upon this change favorably remains to be seen.

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