The controversy caused by the removal of many links from Google has led to some of them now being reinstated.
The issue came about thanks to the internet giant starting to comply with the European Court of Justice “right to be forgotten” ruling. The initial batch of removed links, to articles in the Guardian newspaper and other sites, included details on the former Merrill Lynch boss Stan O’Neal and Scottish referee Dougie McDonald, who was caught lying about a decision he had made.
However, the articles whose links had been removed have now been reinstated. Peter Barron is the head of communications for Google in Europe and he said that it was a “difficult” process and that they were learning what to do as they went along. He also said that they are trying to deal with the issue “as responsibly as possible”.
A European Court of Justice Ruling
The controversy can be traced back to May, when they European Court of Justice ruled that Google acts as a data controller in term of the European data protection act. This means that they have to ensure that they only hold data that is relevant, accurate, not out of date and does not constitute an invasion of privacy.
The first de-linked articles could still be seen on the US version of Google and on the sites they belonged to. They have now been reinstated on the previously affected UK Google site and we will need to wait to see what other articles have their links removed from now on.
Do you agree with this ruling or do you think that Google shouldn’t operate the “right to forget”?
