Google takes steps to comply with EU's 'right to be forgotten' ruling

This asks Google to be the deciders of what information should be free. It&#x27;s an incredibly bad decision by EU lawmakers, and one that no one - not even Google - wants.<p>If Google removes public information, it&#x27;s a loss for everyone. If they don&#x27;t, they&#x27;re immediately open to a legal battle.<p>This is just a horribly rash, poorly thought out law that has little to do with actual privacy, and more to pushing the problem on to Google and their ilk.

&gt; <i>Advocates of freedom of speech have said that the ruling paved the way for rich or powerful individuals and criminals to remove information about them, a claim that is dismissed by privacy activists since the ECJ allowed Google to apply a public interest test in deciding whether to remove the links.</i><p>Oh yeah, no big deal. What would normally be carefully weighed by a judge can just be decided in 30 seconds by a dude with 400 more requests to get through today. I&#x27;m sure that&#x27;s going to go brilliantly.

I&#x27;m wondering if a precise definition of &quot;valid removal request&quot; really exist. For example, if some guy named John Smith was accused and further released after years and submitted a removal request, what should Google do? Even human cannot distinguish this Smith from that Smith.<p>EU court just fear the information world?

It&#x27;ll be a lot of fun if Google publishes the requests as they take things down, in keeping with the spirit of transparency reports.

I would like to create a site where users can submit search terms that have been censored, and it will compare Google EU and non-EU results to show what&#x27;s been removed.

The &quot;Search removal request under European Data Protection law&quot; webform, <a href="https://support.google.com/legal/contact/lr_eudpa?product=websearch&amp;hl=en" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;support.google.com&#x2F;legal&#x2F;contact&#x2F;lr_eudpa?product=we...</a>

What the article does not says it&#x27;s that Google has already stated that information will be &quot;removed&quot; only within UE. So, outside UE, the information will be available. That is they are not going to remove it but just hide it.<p>Granted, the topic is not easy, especially for criminals, but to me it&#x27;s a clear sign that Google don&#x27;t really want to comply with actual privacy laws. And I am sorry but that completely taint whatever they can say about privacy.<p>90% of the demands would probably be reasonable but that means staffing ... customer support. Something we all know, Google want to avoid at all costs.

It seems counterproductive to ask every possible data aggregator (of which Google is just one) to allow data to be taken out and hidden from view.<p>If John Doe has something so embarrassing in their past that would warrant this, it can be accomplished by him changing his name.<p>I mean purely speaking as engineer, I&#x27;d make the central reference (the name) invalid, and not go check every possible reference user.

What next? Will they force google to pay taxes?