Google has officially confirmed that it has received 12000 requests from people to be “forgotten” by Google, within 24 hours of launching the online form. A couple of days ago Google opened up this online form where people can request that search results related to their name be removed from the listings and the SERPs.
Google took this action and opened up a requisition form after the European court declared that people have the right to be forgotten; to be precise, this was in response to a case brought up by a Spanish man who wanted Google to remove search results related to his name and a foreclosure properly. A note left on the property damaged his reputation and he wanted it to be forgotten because he had already solved the issue.
While Google is not very happy with this whole “right to be forgotten” thing (and feels this is tantamount to censorship), it has to comply with the law and had finally opened up an online form a couple of days ago letting people to submit the url that they want to be removed from the search results. The user must also provide an ID proof. Google has also given the freedom to users to submit requests on behalf of others.
Within 24 hours of opening the online form Google has received 12000 requests and Google says that it will look into the individual requests carefully to see if they fit into the criteria given by the EU court and will consider them – apparently if a particular request didn’t fit into the criteria, the request will be denied by Google.
There is no word from Google as to how long it will take them to process a particular request and if it complies we don’t know how long it will take for the search giant to wipe out the links from the SERPs.
Google’s policies with privacy have been challenged recently with this law and this is not the first time. Google got sued by a group of students who didn’t want their emails (in Gmail inbox) to be scanned by Google so that they see relevant ads – the students just spoke up but I am sure all of us don’t want a spider to scan our emails and scrap valuable/confidential information from us. Google agreed to not to scan students’ emails in response that that sue move.
It is good to see people caring for their privacy and taking the necessary steps to safeguard their information and also to not let any other person/company to take advantage or decide of their personal information.