Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG) (NASDAQ:GOOGL) is planning to show an alert at the bottom of each page where a link has been removed under the “right to be forgotten” rule last month. Europe’s highest court ordered the search engine giant to delete the links that European users believed to be inadequate, irrelevant or no longer relevant. However, the link will be still available on the original web page.
Google may include info in biannual report
Ever since the order was passed, Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG) (NASDAQ:GOOGL) has received tens of thousands of requests from internet users requesting the firm delete sensitive information. Google could flag removed search results just like it warns users to delete the request over copyright infringing materials. For instance, a webpage shows that the search engine giant has taken down number of results from the “Adele MP3” after receiving complaints under the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act, according to the Guardian.
The search engine giant publishes its biannual report where the number of government requests to remove material from the website are shown. The company is also planning to include information about “right to be forgotten” links in the next report.
So far, Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG) (NASDAQ:GOOGL) has received 41,000 requests to delete the sensitive links of users ib Europe, according to a statement from the company last week. Users such as a politician with a grey past, a convicted pedophile and a man who tried to kill his family members asked Google to remove the links related to their past. According to Google chief executive Larry Page, around 41,000 requests were received, out of which one-fifth were related to serious crime and 12% are related to child pornography arrests.
Privacy main concern
The search engine giant receives the request through the forms it has offered to users, but is not required to comply with every request. However, the company must consider and review every single request and decide if deleting it would be in the public interest. For the purpose of reviewing each request, Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG) (NASDAQ:GOOGL) has formed an advisory committee to advice on the cases that are important from public point of view. The committee includes executive chairman Eric Schmidt and Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales.
Wales said in an interview with the technology site TechCrunch, “I think the decision will have no impact on people’s right to privacy, because I don’t regard truthful information in court records published by court order in a newspaper to be private information.” Given this statement, it sounds like an awful lot of those 41,000 requests Google has received so far are going to be denied.
