Google has come under fire for its “clumsy” approach to obeying Europe’s new “right to be forgotten” law, after it began blocking some name-based searches to articles on the websites of UK news organisations.The Guardian, Daily Mail and BBC complained about the search engine implementing a ruling made in May by Europe’s highest court, the European court of justice, by starting to remove links to some pages when searches are made against particular names.
www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jul/03/google-right-to-be-forgotten-law-uk-news-search-requestsAlso see:Google will be happy with media anger over ‘right to be forgotten’
The “right to be forgotten” has created a right old headache for Google and for publishers alike. As a result of a European court ruling, people can request results relating to them to be removed from Google’s searches – even if the original article is true, fair and accurate – if it is “outdated” or “irrelevant”. Google says it has received at least 70,000 such requests.So far, six Guardian articles, at least one BBC article and several Mail Online pieces have been affected by Google’s implementation of the ruling, we learned on Thursday, as the publishers received automated notifications that their work had been partially delisted. There has been no small degree of confusion as to what this actually means. Firstly, no web page disappears from the internet as a result of this: the articles are still present, but may become much harder to find because Google removes the offending article from search results for the complainant’s name.
http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jul/03/google-happy-media-anger-right-to-be-forgottenGoogle removing BBC link was ‘not a good judgement’
Google’s decision to remove a BBC article from some of its search results was “not a good judgement”, a European Commission spokesman has said.A link to an article by Robert Peston was taken down under the European court’s “right to be forgotten” ruling.But Ryan Heath, spokesman for the European Commission’s vice-president, said he could not see a “reasonable public interest” for the action.
http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-28144406Google Starts Erasing Links for Searches in Europe
In May, a European court told Google it must assist people in cleaning up their online reputations by ruling that there is a “right to be forgotten.”Google’s efforts to comply with that decision moved a step forward this week, as several British news organizations, including the BBC and The Guardian, announced that they had been notified that certain articles would no longer appear in search results because a complaint had been filed.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/04/technology/google-starts-erasing-links-for-searches-in-europe.htmlGoogle reverses decision to delete British newspaper links
Google Inc on Thursday reversed its decision to remove several links to stories in Britain’s Guardian newspaper, underscoring the difficulty the search engine is having implementing Europe’s “right to be forgotten” ruling.The Guardian protested the removal of its stories describing how a football referee lied about reversing a penalty decision. It was unclear who asked Google to remove the stories.
http://uk.reuters.com/article/2014/07/03/uk-google-searches-idUKKBN0F82KN20140703
http://in.reuters.com/article/2014/07/04/us-google-searches-idINKBN0F901120140704