With Google already having received more than 70,000 requests for web pages to be taken down since the "right to be forgotten" ruling by the European Court of Justice (ECJ), the company has faced a backlash over some of the links they have removed. Now, the search company is speaking out after the trouble it faced earlier this month on how it will be handling the requests going forward.
Among those web pages delisted recently was an article from The Guardian newspaper in the United Kingdom, which has since been put back online after the debacle put Google in the doghouse over perceived manipulation of the requests to gain support for what the company has called "censorship" by the European court.
In an article published in The Guardian, Google Chief Legal Officer David Drummond slammed the ruling, but also added that the company would still continue to follow the ruling and take down links as part of the "right to be forgotten."
"When it comes to determining what's in the public interest, we're taking into account a number of factors," Drummond wrote.
He added that among the information that would not be taken down or delisted includes those pages that relate to politicians, celebrities or other public figures. This is in line with the ECJ ruling that has stated the ruling should only affect private citizens. Drummond did say that the company would be looking at material and determine if it comes from a reputable news service before making decisions to remove links.
He also said that Google will be looking at whether a certain page removal request "involves political speech; questions of professional conduct that might be relevant to consumers; the involvement of criminal convictions that are not yet 'spent'; and if the information is being published by a government. But these will always be difficult and debatable judgments."
The article comes after Google faced widespread scrutiny over some of the pages they delisted.
Among the articles being deleted from specific searches include, but are not limited to, a referee who lied about a penalty, British singer and fashionista Kelly Osborne, a former Merrill Lynch banker and other articles, it has been revealed. News outlets BBC and The Guardian have voiced concerns over the removal of the articles, but the result of the removals have been a debate over how to go forward over the "right to be forgotten" ruling that allows average citizens to request links to things related to them that are irrelevant and dated to be deleted from searches.
