Google Loses “Right To Be Forgotten” Case: Will It Erase Your Data From Search Upon Request?

How do you remove your sins from Google Search? Ask Google or go to the court if they don’t listen to your request. A UK businessman did the same and won a lawsuit against the search giant.

The man whose name is not revealed spent six months in prison for conspiring to intercept communications. That was ten years ago, but the fact that news reports about his conviction could still be accessed via Google pinched him.

Before knocking the court’s door, he contacted Google to take down search results related to his crime as it was hurting his reputation. The company turned him down.

His point in the front of the court was that the content was no longer relevant. The court also said that the crime and its punishment information has become outdated and of “no sufficient interest to users of Google Search to justify its continued availability.”

“We work hard to comply with the right to be forgotten, but we take great care not to remove search results that are in the public interest,” Google said in a statement. The search giant will comply with the court’s order.

There is another businessman who faced four years of prison time ten years ago for conspiring to false accounting. He also wanted to search results removed but lost the case. The court said that the claimant didn’t accept his guilt and continued to mislead people while the first man had “shown remorse.”

The Right to be forgotten was brought by the Court of Justice of the European Union in 2014. Since then, companies like Google and Facebook have processed tens of thousands of right to be forgotten requests.

It’s unclear what repercussions would rulings like this bring. It may motivate other past convicts to erase themselves from the internet. However easy it may sound, but getting your search results removed isn’t easy.

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