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Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOGL) Handling More Than 70K “Right-to-Be-Forgotten” European Requests

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Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOGL) in op-eds in several major European newspapers and reposted in a blog on the company’s website, said Friday it has received more than 70,000 “right-to-be-forgotten” requests in Europe. It’s a development that complicates freedom of speech interpretation, the right of corporations over individuals, and poses a potential snag to Google’s international push. Shares are up some 1.3% in afternoon trading, part of tech-sector gains that are outrunning broader market weakness in Friday’s session.

A European Court allowed the “right-to-be-forgotten” requests there, which Google said so far has included former politicians, violent criminals, and some professionals subject to unfavorable customer reviews who demand search results purge their names. Google has publicly expressed its disagreement with the ruling but said it is dedicating personnel to processing the requests.

Google’s legal chief writes: the European Court found that people have the right to ask for information to be removed from search results that include their names if it is “inadequate, irrelevant or no longer relevant, or excessive.” In deciding what to remove, search engines must also have regard to the public interest. These are, of course, very vague and subjective tests.

He continues: The court also decided that search engines don’t qualify for a “journalistic exception.” This means that The Guardian could have an article on its website about an individual that’s perfectly legal, but we might not legally be able to show links to it in our results when you search for that person’s name. It’s a bit like saying the book can stay in the library, it just cannot be included in the library’s card catalogue. It’s for these reasons that we disagree with the ruling. That said, we obviously respect the court’s authority and are doing our very best to comply quickly and responsibly. It’s a huge task as we’ve had over 70,000 take-down requests covering 250,000 webpages since May. So we now have a team of people individually reviewing each application, in most cases with limited information and almost no context.

GOOGL is up 1% in afternoon trading, moving in the upper end of its $580.58 to $586.31 52-week low.

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