In a new set of guidelines rolled out in Brussels, the de facto capital of the European Union, the body that gathers the Union’s 28 member states’ privacy regulators have expressed their opinion that the Union’s “right to be forgotten” regulations should be extended to the international versions of the search engines’ websites, just like Google.com, The Wall Street Journal reports. The recently introduced regulation was applied by the search giant to its local European search engines, but not to its international version.
The European Union has decided this May that individuals living on the old continent have the right to be “forgotten” by internet search engines. The number of requests to be forgotten by Google were high, especially in Germany, well known for its people’s concerns about their privacy and security (the number of credit and debit card users in the country is among the lowest in the European Union). The EU seems to be out for Google’s blood lately – the “right to be forgotten” law was followed by a major tax bill in France and the proposal to un-bundle Google’s search engine from its other services that was published recently.
The “right to be forgotten” regulation was applied by Google on a short notice over the summer, but only to its European domains – google.co.uk, google.de and similar. The company has not applied it to its google.com website, though, so European users can still access the information through that domain, even if they are unable to find the same information through their local search engine. Google has also decided to notify websites that have been subject to such removals. This was not well received by European privacy regulators, as it made possible to find out who requested the removal.
According to the WSJ, Google might find a way to apply the regulation to its google.com website, but not apply it globally. The search engine can return different search results based on the location of the user. It is not clear if such a solution will be accepted by European regulators – or it’s more likely not to be accepted, judging by the rant against the American search giant.