Google, Microsoft to Talk About “Right to Be Forgotten” With EU Data Protection Body

For the first time in months, a body within the European Union has the right idea about how to handle the Right to be forgotten ruling from the Court of Justice and has proposed a meeting with all search engines. 

The data protection advisory board in the European Union, theArticle 29 Working Party, has already met this week to talk about how link removal requests are handled by search engines and the premise on which they are rejected, for instance. 

As the group noticed, there needs to be a “coordinated and coherent” set of guidelines to help EU countries handle complaints from Internet users within the Union.

Article 29 Party wrote that the data protection authorities have analyzed the different legal bases allowing individuals – regardless of their nationality, residency or harm suffered – to be allowed to request search engines to take down links from their indexes. 

“The precise methods of exercising this right to be forgotten, as well as search engines’ potential refusal to execute this right was also studied in an in-depth manner,” the Party wrote. 

It is also mentioned that it’s important for citizens of the European Union to really understand why a search engine can reject their requests. This particular detail is, of course, quite important, but it should be mentioned that Google does in fact tell users before they even file the request that some types of links will not be taken down. 

For instance, link leading to articles on several topics such as fraud, criminal activities, child molestation, professional malpraxis, and so on will not be taken down by Google. 

While Google has been receiving tens of thousands of requests, other search engines have been largely left alone. Of course, that’s also because Google’s search engine is used by over 90% of Europeans, while Bing, for instance, only has a 2.5 percent share in the area. 

Microsoft has also recently unveiled a special mechanism to submit link removal requests to streamline things, after receiving a dozen requests in the first few days following the decision, the very same days when Google received over 20,000 requests. 

The Article 29 Working Party plans to meet with Google, Microsoft and other search engines later this month to discuss about practical ways to implement the “right to be forgotten.” The decision comes after the move has been slammed by media and companies alike. 

Google has agreed to take down some links so far, but it hasn’t done so without a fight. The company doesn’t just display a notice on search results pages featuring the names of those who are requesting the take-down, but it is also informing the news outlets or bloggers about the fact that a certain link will no longer show up on Google. This has led to many sites publicly announcing the details of the latest messages received from Google, making the entire takedown procedure useless.