Compliance Management, Government Regulations, Privacy

Google complies with ‘right to be forgotten’ ruling, updates policy

Google confirmed earlier reports that the company will comply with a September judgment by a French court that ordered the search giant to remove "right to be forgotten" results from search results on all Google sites.

The search giant originally contended that it was only required to remove results on local search engines such as google.fr, google.co.uk and its other European sites because completely removing names would interfere with the public's right to information.

Last month, the BBC reported that Google would soon begin to remove search results on all versions of Google, when a European IP address is detected. A blog post by global privacy counsel Peter Fleischer confirmed Google's revised policy on Friday.

“Starting next week, in addition to our existing practice, we will also use geolocation signals (like IP addresses) to restrict access to the delisted URL on all Google Search domains, including google.com, when accessed from the country of the person requesting the removal,” Fleischer wrote. “We'll apply the change retrospectively, to all delistings that we have already done under the European Court ruling.”

In Google's November transparency report, the search giant said it removed 441,032 URL results, after receiving 348,508 ‘right to be forgotten' requests.

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