Google received more than 12,000 requests from individuals looking to remove search results from the European versions of its search engine hours after publishing a court-mandated online form on Friday, Reuters reports.
The form complies with European Data Protection Law’s “right to be forgotten” by providing a way for people to have outdated and irrelevant online information pulled. Earlier this month, Google lost a lawsuit brought by a man seeking to have links to decade-old debt proceedings removed from the search engine.
A Google spokesperson told Reuters that the ruling requires the company to make “difficult judgements” with the information. Google’s form indicates that it will look for a potential “public interest,” such as outing financial scams, malpractice and criminal convictions, when deciding whether to comply with a request.
➤ Google in quandary over how to uphold EU privacy ruling [Reuters]
See also: Google introduces an online form to let EU users request the removal of outdated links
Image Credit: JOEL SAGET/AFP/Getty Images
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