Google advisory council for limiting ‘Right to be forgotten’ to Europe

The conclusion of Google's advisory council, which was formed to debate the global rollout of the right to be forgotten rule, would likely irk the European Union (EU) regulators, The Drum reported. According to EU officials, the search engine needed to censor results worldwide due to the ease with which Google.com could be accessed in Europe.

Google's advisers had supported its position that the so-called right to be forgotten requests need to be limited to Europe.

Members of Google's advisory board accepted that an expansion of the ruling might boost data protection for individual users but warned that there were other issues that needed consideration.

The council said over 95 per cent of all search queries from Europe were made on local versions of the site.

''We believe that delistings applied to the European versions of search will, as a general rule, protect the rights of the data subject adequately in the current state of affairs and technology,'' Google's committee said in its report.

The right to be forgotten directive basically gave individuals in the EU the right to ask for the removal of links in Google's search engine results in certain situations, www.eweek.com reported. Google had maintained the requirements of the directive could be fulfilled by removing links in search engine results in the EU but not elsewhere.

Siding with the viewpoint, the advisory panel said: "There is a competing interest on the part of users outside of Europe to access information via a name-based search in accordance with the laws of their country, which may be in conflict with the [requirements of the EU directive].''

"There is also a competing interest on the part of users within Europe to access versions of search other than their own," the report noted.

Though the council supported the objectives of the right to be forgotten directive, it said, given concerns of proportionality and practical effectiveness, it concluded that removal from nationally directed versions of Google's search services within the EU was the appropriate means to implement the ruling at this stage.