Google right to be forgotten 'looks odd and clumsy'

Something was rotten in the state of the internet this week, though it’s unclear who’s to blame. Reports started emerging from major news outlets that links to their stories had been pulled from the European web as part of Google’s new commitment to the EU right to be forgotten. Was Google hamming things up by letting slip the …

[Anonymous Coward]

So far the articles removed from Google EU searches just seem to have drawn attention to the items removed which seems counter-productive for the people concerned.

I wonder if someone will set up a website (outside the EU!) which identifies differences between searches within the EU and outside EU censorship so highlighting the items removed?

[Eponymous Cowherd]

Google's deliberate intention?

You have to wonder if it isn't Google's deliberate intention to bring attention to deleted articles in order to create a "Streisand effect" for each.

This is certainly the case for the Peston article. I imagine that whoever asked to be "forgotten" is ruing the day he made that request of Google.

Certainly a most effective way for Google to demonstrate to the ECJ that their ruling is actually having the opposite effect to that intended. Far from being "forgotten", these people are being brought fully into the glare of very powerful spotlights.

Will the next move of the ECJ be to abandon this ruliing, or to ban search providers from telling authors that their article(s) have been excluded from search results?

[Tony Green]

Of course it's clumsy

They want the whole thing to look as awful as possible to discredit the idea to get it canned. So that's why they're making sure ridiculous demands, especially over high-profile media sites like the BBC and various national newspapers (and the Daily Mail), get as much publicity as possible.

[Tom 38]

Re: Of course it's clumsy

Plus they are going that little bit further - they didn't email "[e-mail]", they emailed the journo directly in order to trigger the follow up story.

The first thing google should say in response to any request is "Sure, no problem, where is the court order". They are entitled to do so, but they don't because they want to make a story out of it and spin it their way.

If our courts are overwhelmed because of one of our laws, we'll deal with it. I doubt they will be.

[Tom 38]

Re: Of course it's clumsy

And they've just now announced that all the links they've removed in the past couple of days - they've added them back again. Guess too many people saw through it.

[ratfox]

Re: Asking for a court order

Given Google were specifically ordered by the ECJ to examine requests themselves first, asking every time for a court order would likely get them attacked for being deliberately obstructive, wasting taxpayer money and trying yet again to avoid following the law.

I'm not sure either why you get the idea that the courts would be able to handle the load of requests. The numbers quoted give 50'000 requests in a month. You think the ICO can handle that?

Normally, people complain that Google are ignoring regulators; but here, you are complaining Google are doing exactly as they were told.

[Tom 38]

Re: Asking for a court order

50,000 people might fill in a web form, 50,000 people won't instruct a solicitor.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Asking for a court order

Couldn't they remove on receipt of the request but tell the person who has something to hide that it will only be made permanent if there is court order and will be restored after x months if not followed up with a court order.

[The First Dave]

"Based on our statistics, the shutdown has affected in some form at least 25 per cent of the APT groups we are tracking"

In other news, shutting down the root DNS servers have been predicted to affect nearly 100% of malware.

[Salts]

It's in the comments...

Yesterday Peston updated the article saying he thought the removal was due to someone who had made a comment on the article requesting the link to be removed, if that was true just think of the possibilities.