14 DAY TRIAL // Despite reports saying that Google is actually looking for ways to shake off the recent European privacy ruling, it looks like the company will start respecting the “right to be forgotten” as soon as this month.
According to the New York Times, Google will start removing links to online content in Europe as per the citizens’ request.
Not too long ago, the Court of Justice of the European Union told search engines that they need to listen to the users and remove links found on search results pages with their names on them. People can ask for them to be removed if they believe them to not be relevant anymore.
The company has grumbled about how difficult it is for such a decision to be respected, especially since deciding on the relevancy of a piece of information is a subjective topic that varies from person to person.
Then, Google put together a form to help out those wanting to submit such requests. In it, the company mentions that requests to remove information about criminal activity, financial fraud, child abuse, and more would not be honored. Furthermore, in order to avoid fraud, the company required people to provide a copy of their IDs to verify their identity.
Since then, the company has apparently received more than 50,000 submissions, with more than 12,000 requests filed within the first day.
Google has already started to notify individuals that their submissions will be looked at and acted upon. A team led by the company’s legal department will review each request and decide whether or not the links should be removed.
If they approve of the requests, the company will remove the links within its sites for all 28 members of the European Union, as well as Norway, Iceland, Switzerland, and Liechtenstein. Using Google.com would still return the search results complete with the targeted links.
If the answer is negative, those who filed the requests can take the case to court and fight things over there, although very few will likely follow through.
The link removal process is said to start by the end of June, although it could take a while before everything is looked at since there’s no automated process behind the decision-making system.
Google has also put together an advisory group of privacy experts, regulators, company execs, and academics to look into the impact the new privacy ruling will have over the way the company returns search results to its users in the entire world. Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia, is part of this advisory group and has already made a few acid statements regarding the effect this will have on the people’s right to know the untarnished history of anyone they want.