Google starts taking European personal data link removal requests

Google has set live a web form in which Europeans can request that links to out-of-date or unwelcome online information about them be removed, Gigaom.com reports.

The form’s appearance follows a judgement by the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU), in which the court said people had a right to have stop search providers from linking to information including their name that is “inadequate, irrelevant or no longer relevant, or excessive in relation to the purposes for which they were processed.”


This mostly affects Google, which holds well over 90 percent of the European search market. The ruling has frequently been referred to as entrenching a “right to be forgotten”, though it actually just says existing offline rights also exist online. It also doesn’t mean that the linked-to content must itself be removed — just the links. A more comprehensive right to be forgotten may soon be instituted in new legislation.