European Ruling On Removing Google Links May Leave A Mess, by Aarti Shanani, All Tech Considered, NPR
Google’s lawyers are trying to make sense of a ruling they did not expect.
This week, Europe’s highest court decided that people have a right to have search results about them deleted from online databases. So Google has to remove links to certain pages. Legal experts in Europe are torn about what, exactly, that means.
What Prompted The Ruling
There’s a man in Spain who doesn’t like his search results. I ask a fellow Spaniard, Cristina de la Serna in Madrid, to show us why.
She goes to Google.es, Spain’s version of the search engine, and types in the name Mario Costeja Gonzalez. The second result she gets for Gonzalez is a link to a 1998 Spanish newspaper clip. It shows his home was repossessed because of debt.
Google Must Delete Personal Data When Asked, European Court Says
Gonzalez wants the old blemish to go away, and de la Serna thinks he’s got a point. Searching people isn’t the same as searching for shoes, cars or books. . . .
