A recent ruling by the European Union Court of Justice (ECJ) determined that people had “the right to be forgotten” and mandated that Google remove outdated, unflattering information about them from search queries if requested by an individual. In response to the court’s ruling Mountain View created an online form for people to formally file requests to have old links removed from web searches.
Although Google has agreed to scrub parts of the web, the search giant may still leave traces of user requests. According to The Guardian, the company is planning to include a notification identifying that information has been removed due to a person’s request, similar to how it handles copyright infringing content.
If this turns out to be the case, Google will technically be honoring the ECJ’s ruling, however it does leave a bit of a fingerprint behind revealing that something has been changed. It’s also been documented that link removals will apply to specific European versions of Google, with results still showing in different locations like the US.
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