Very interesting development. I presume when he refers to "deleting" he means something more like allowing a user to remove references to him/herself from, say

Very interesting development. I presume when he refers to "deleting" he means something more like allowing a user to remove references to him/herself from, say, Google, which is effectively the same as removing from "the internet" (nerd analogy - if you lose the MBR on your hard drive, you basically lose the data since there's no simple way to rebuild it. I know, not a perfect analogy, but still..) Here's the question I have -- no answer just yet but curious what you folks think. If I had some bad press about me in the New York Times and I had the ability to have Google de-index the pages that talk about me, is that a Good or Bad thing? I imagine they wouldn't simply remove the entire pages, but they'd instead make it so searches for my name wouldn't show the bad stuff whereas other related searches would pull up those pages. On the one hand, this is a plus for people and the ability to personally be in charge of your online image. On the other hand, this is a minus for "open information" -- maybe Jack's drunken arrest on disorderly conduct charges doesn't need to show up, but Bill's indictment for securities fraud better serves the public interest, particularly if he's a con artist and runs the same scam again and again... Thoughts?