In fashion similar to Google's removal of links leading to data that compromises the quality of life of European citizens, Microsoft will reportedly begin offering an online means for EU residents to be forgotten from its Bing search engine.
After an EU High Court re-affirmed a lower court's ruling that forced Google to disassociate controversial links with individuals who request the procedure, an anonymous source revealed to the New York Times that Microsoft would roll out a similar system. The source indicated that Microsoft intended to confer with Yahoo on the specifics before releasing the system -- Yahoo relies on Bing to deliver web searches.
"We're continuing to work out the details on how we plan to implement the recent ruling by the European Court of Justice and expect to launch a form soon for EU residents to submit requests," stated a Microsoft spokesperson.
Though much smaller than Google, which reportedly accounts for 92 percent of EU search traffic, Bing will likely face a lot of administrative work when its "Right to Be Forgotten" system launches sometime in the week of July 13 through 19. If Bing's form follows Google's designs, it will require users include photo identification along with links to the content in question and reasons why the links should be omitted from the search engine.
"Developing an appropriate system is taking us some time," stated Microsoft on July 9. "We expect to launch a form through which users can make requests soon."
As Microsoft prepares to try to forget distasteful details surrounding the lives of EU citizens, Google's program was well under way. The search engine company was said to have received approximately 70,000 requests to be forgotten, so far.
David Drummond, Google's chief legal counsel, said Google has assembled a team dedicated to manually review applications of individuals or entities that would like to be forgotten, though a lack of information and a constant absence of context has been hindering the process.
"The examples we've seen so far highlight the difficult value judgments search engines and European society now face: former politicians wanting posts removed that criticize their policies in office; serious, violent criminals asking for articles about their crimes to be deleted; bad reviews for professionals like architects and teachers; comments that people have written themselves (and now regret). In each case someone wants the information hidden, while others might argue that it should be out in the open," said Drummond.
The Right to Be Forgotten request won't end with Google and Bing. The EU High Court's ruling applied to Ask.com and DuckDuckGo.
