Contrary to the European Union's (EU) guidelines, Google says the right to be forgotten can only be invoked in Google's websites in European countries. However, the search engine is reviewing whether to apply the same right on its other websites as well.
Google chief legal officer David Drummond says the right to be forgotten, or the right of individuals to have links to content about them removed from Google's search results should the content be found "inadequate, irrelevant, or no longer relevant," is limited to its European websites, such as Google.de in Germany and Google.fr in France. However, Drummond says Google could expand the application of the right to be forgotten to other websites if deemed appropriate.
Google's approach to applying the right to be forgotten has remained the same since November, when the EU ruled that Google must scrub search results about individuals from its index if they meet the relevant criteria.
"We've had a basic approach, we've followed it, on this question we've made removals Europe-wide but not beyond," Drummond tells reporters at an event in Brussels on Monday.
However, Article 29 Working Party, the privacy watchdog of the EU, insists that Google must remove search results across all of its websites, arguing that a user can easily switch to Google.com to access the content removed from the European Google sites.
Drummond says Google is waiting for recommendations from an advisory council whose members include a former German justice minister and Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales. From September to November last year, the council conducted conferences across Europe to discuss how to balance freedom of expression and individuals' right to privacy. The council is expected to publish a report of its discussions by the end of January, which Google hopes to study to help it make better decisions about how to best approach the right to be forgotten.
"It's our strong view that there needs to be some way of limiting the concept, because it is a European concept," Drummond says. "We'll take that (the report), along with the Article 29 input and other input and arrive at an approach."
According to Google's latest transparency report, more than 200,000 takedown requests have been made, affecting more than 700,000 domains, since the ruling was put into effect last year. More than half, or 58 percent, of those requests have been refused. Those whose requests have been refused can appeal the matter before their national data protection agency, which can then take action against Google.
On Friday, Article 29 sent a letter to Microsoft, Yahoo, and French search engine Qwant to remind them that the right to be forgotten must be applied across all global websites.
