Google to accept erase requests to unflattering information in search results in Europe

Google is open to accepting requests from Europeans who want to erase unflattering information on themselves from the results produced by the world's dominant search engine.

Google has created a web page on which demands can be submitted. The company opened the page to the public late Thursday after Europe's highest court issued a ruling two weeks ago.

With the decision Europeans can now burnish their online reputations by petitioning Google and other search engines to remove potentially damaging links to newspaper articles and other websites featuring embarrassing information about their past activities.

According to commentators, Google's compliance leaves the company pitchforked between  having to balance privacy concerns and "the right to be forgotten" against the principles of free expression and "the right to know."

They add it would also create a divide between how Google generated search results about some people in Europe and the rest of the world.

For the time being though, Google would only erase personal information spanning a 32-nation swathe in Europe, which meant googling the same person in the US and dozens of other countries could look much different than it does from Europe.

''The court's ruling requires Google to make difficult judgments about an individual's right to be forgotten and the public's right to know," a Google spokesman said in a statement emailed to AFP.

The internet search giant was in the process of setting up an advisory committee to help strike a balance between freedom of information and people's rights when it came to not being haunted by untruths or acts past acts on the internet.

This committee includes former Google chief Eric Schmidt, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, Oxford Internet Institute ethics professor Luciano Floridi, Leuven University law school director Peggy Valcke, former Spanish data protection agency director Jose Luis Pinar and UN envoy on freedom of expression Frank La Rue.

"I'm delighted to join the international advisory committee established by Google to evaluate the ethical and legal challenges posed by the internet," Floridi said in a written statement.

"It is an exciting initiative which will probably require some hard and rather philosophical thinking."