Update: The decision has been made in favor of Google. This means that Google will have to only delete the search results when requested in Europe alone, the global search results will not be affected. You may read the story below to understand the context.
Unquestionably, Google is the best search engine out there. In addition to its usefulness, it also happens to be one of the biggest portals to list billions of search results. You can even try to get our information on Google – right now.
However, the big news of the hour is – Tuesday (tomorrow), the European Court of Justice is going to put its decision for the impact of “right to be forgotten” European policy on Google’s search engine results. Do note, that this only applies to Europe.
The “right to be forgotten” policy implies that anyone can request/force their personal information to be removed if that is considered to be inadequate, irrelevant or no longer relevant, or excessive (including any data about their past crimes). Of course, this does not sound exciting, but it is what it is.
If the decision is in favor of the European policy, then Google must delete search results when requested. Whether this will affect the search results globally or just in Europe, time will tell.
Even though the “right to be forgotten” policy is something that helps to protect privacy rights, it also risks the freedom of speech. It can be easily used by individuals for manipulating search results in a whim.
While we rely on Google (and other search engines) to find useful information and resources, policies like these will probably change the way how search results work.
For a specific group of people, this might be a good thing. For the rest, this might be catastrophic. You can count in a lot of websites and companies listed online to have peronsal information of users in some way or the other, how will it affect them?
Will it affect the Google search results globally or just in Europe? Tomorrow, we are going to get some answers to these questions.
What are your thoughts on this? Let us know in the comments below.