Last month the European Court of Justice ruled that people had the right to ask Google to scrub “inadequate, irrelevant or no longer relevant” results from their search. Yesterday, the search giant opened itself up to requests – and was promptly inundated.
12,000 Europeans applied within 24 hours of the company offering the service, which – as well as being a great way to get your old MySpace profile from back in high school taken off the world’s most popular search engine – is also a handy avenue of recourse for people whose names are associated with more serious outdated and inaccurate information.
The company’s set up an advisory committee, comprised of former Google exec Eric Schmidt, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales and Oxford Internet Institute ethics professor Luciano Floridi, to handle the process. It’s previously labelled the ECJ ruling “disappointing”, adding “The court’s ruling requires Google to make difficult judgments about an individual’s right to be forgotten and the public’s right to know.”
The service is currently only offered to Europeans, on European searches, so you’re probably gonna have to wait a bit longer to get your early ’00s Limp Bizkit fansitetaken off. Sorry?
Image via PHILIPPE HUGUEN for AFP
