4 ms·

Google sets up 'right to be forgotten' form after EU ruling

8 points by sunilkumarc 12y ago

ASneakyFox 12y ago
What a glorious day for google. They're so big that an entire continent created a law just for them to follow.
Supermighty 12y ago
I don't think this bodes well for the quality of Google's search results. What if someone asks to have a page on my blog removed because it talks about them. Do I get to contest it, am I notified at all. What recourse do I have if my income is affected by the removal of the page. "Google said it would assess each request"; manually processing each request sounds like a terrible way to handle this. Will spammers use this as an attack vector until it's automated, at which point they can start to have competitors pages removed. I think any manually tampering with the SERPs is a slippery slope to bad quality.
- DanBC 12y ago
  When I search for John Doe I want to find relevant upto date results. If I am getting ten blogs that you have set up with excessive SEO purely to attack John Doe with something that happened ten years ago then that's possibly not what I want to find. The Google form requires proof of ID which makes it much harder for spammers to automate attacks. Manual checking of each case does have problems but I hope it means that Google only removes results from people who have an expectation of privacy and where those results are irrelevant. Don't forget this only applies to EU servers. I can ask to be forgotton from google.co.uk and even if Google comply those same results will be on google.com And this result applies to all search engines (probably all companies) with a Euro presence. I am glad that Google took this fully through the court process. It's something that needed full scrutiny. It does clearly highlight differences between EU and US. People talk about "censorship" - some people in the US cannot comprehend just how much people in EU don't mind not being able to say some things.

4 ms·

Google sets up 'right to be forgotten' form after EU ruling

8 points by sunilkumarc 12y ago

ASneakyFox 12y ago
What a glorious day for google. They're so big that an entire continent created a law just for them to follow.
Supermighty 12y ago
I don't think this bodes well for the quality of Google's search results. What if someone asks to have a page on my blog removed because it talks about them. Do I get to contest it, am I notified at all. What recourse do I have if my income is affected by the removal of the page. "Google said it would assess each request"; manually processing each request sounds like a terrible way to handle this. Will spammers use this as an attack vector until it's automated, at which point they can start to have competitors pages removed. I think any manually tampering with the SERPs is a slippery slope to bad quality.
- DanBC 12y ago
  When I search for John Doe I want to find relevant upto date results. If I am getting ten blogs that you have set up with excessive SEO purely to attack John Doe with something that happened ten years ago then that's possibly not what I want to find. The Google form requires proof of ID which makes it much harder for spammers to automate attacks. Manual checking of each case does have problems but I hope it means that Google only removes results from people who have an expectation of privacy and where those results are irrelevant. Don't forget this only applies to EU servers. I can ask to be forgotton from google.co.uk and even if Google comply those same results will be on google.com And this result applies to all search engines (probably all companies) with a Euro presence. I am glad that Google took this fully through the court process. It's something that needed full scrutiny. It does clearly highlight differences between EU and US. People talk about "censorship" - some people in the US cannot comprehend just how much people in EU don't mind not being able to say some things.