Google extends 'right to be forgotten' rule to all global domains in EU

Giving in to the demands of EU regulators, Google said that it will soon apply its "right to be forgotten" rule to all versions of its search engine. Hence, when a user in an EU country searches for information about a person who has exercised the "right to be forgotten" – from the same region – then the result will not show up on any of its search domains if accessed from within Europe.

The move will apply to all Google domains, regardless of which country within EU the person searching for content is located in, according to Reuters. In May 2014, the European Court Of Justice had issued a ruling that EU citizens have the "right to be forgotten" online. If an individual in EU considers content published about them to be violating privacy, or that it is no longer relevant in public interest, then the affected person can raise a "right to be forgotten" request, on all of Google's search domains.

However, the individuals must provide the links that they would like to be removed, as well as the search terms related to that content. Google will then delete those links from the search results from the originating country and the EU versions of its search engine.

On the flipside, there is a loophole in the implementation of the ruling, as Google has applied the rights only across EU versions of the search site. In other words, if a EU resident (say French) asks Google to remove all the links/sites connected to his/her name, the links will not be visible on any of the Google's website, including Google.com, when the search is made from within Europe. But the same (deleted) information could be easily found by issuing the search in google.com out of EU.

Since the ruling was implemented, Google has received numerous requests for content to be removed. However, the search giant has honoured only around 43% of these requests.

As of November 2015, Google had received more than 348,000 requests and evaluated more than 1.2 million links for removal, including more than 441,000 URLs. Google opted not to remove 608,169 URLs; the rest are pending review or require additional information, according to data published by Google.