The Court of Justice of the European Union ruled last week that Google and other search engines can be required to delete links to outdated information concerning individuals published on the Internet. The court case will force Google to comply with any European citizens that request to be ‘forgotten’ by search engines. The citizens can submit a request to be forgotten directly to the search engines, who will then have to remove out-of-date information from any search results they provide.
Google is working on a system to comply with this ruling. The new tool that they are reportedly working on will allow people to submit the requests, and review them for validity. The system would also have authentication built in to prevent unauthorized requests of information removal from being submitted. Not details regarding how this authentication would work, or how secure it would actually be, have been released.
This type of system may be concerning for many marketers, given the fact that if someone is able to submit an unauthorized request, it could have major implications on the ranking of business websites. There has been no comment on how these specific types of concerns are being addressed, other than that there will be an authentication system built in.
A Google spokesman commented on the issue in an email saying, “The ruling has significant implications for how we handle takedown requests. This is logistically complicated – not least because of the many languages involved and the need for careful review. As soon as we have thought through exactly how this will work, which may take several weeks, we will let our users know.”
Whether or not this new system will be available for users in the United States or other non-EU countries has not been announced.
