Google: NO Need of Global ‘Right To Be Forgotten’

SPR : Google has written in a new blog post that it won’t be complying with the new French order to make the Right To Be Forgotten global. According to Google, France can’t decide and control the information being accessed and searched in other countries.

The Europen Union and the United States – both have a very different outlook regarding privacy policies. Back in 2014, the European Court of Justice issued the “right to be forgotten” ruling that allows people to remove their personal information from Google. Since then, Google has processed more than a quarter of a million requests in the wake of this Right to be Forgotten ruling. Also, Google and the EU have been facing off each other at multiple occasions. In a recent development, Google has announced that it won’t be complying with the French order to enact the Right to be Forgotten globally.

In Europe, Google is bound to remove the search listings of a person, if he/she can prove that those search result links contain old or degrading information. The European versions of Google like Google.co.uk and Google.fr have been actively processing such Right To Be Forgotten requests in the past, but those links still appear on the Google.com and other versions.

In a recent blog post, Peter Fleischer, Google’s Global Privacy Counsel said that that France can’t dictate Google and affect the Internet’s freedom. Google has called these global measures “disproportionate and unnecessary.” In the blog post, Google mentions that currently 97% of the internet users in France use Google.fr instead of Google.com or any other version. The search engine giant has called this a matter of principle and “respectfully” disagreed with the new Right To Be Forgotten laws.

Google has called it a troubling development and supported its arguments by writing that no single country should have any authority to control the search and content being accessed in another country.

Google also asked the Fench Data Protection Authority (CNIL) to withdraw its order. It should be noted that if the search-engine giant doesn’t comply with the order, it could face serious penalties.

Read Google’s complete blog post here.

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