Oh those poor search engines, making billions of dollars having to have the decency to let private individuals not have to have their lives opened up to casual searches on the internet 24/7. What a tragedy!
I for one have NO DESIRE for my children to grow up in a world where they do not have control over information about themselves on the internet. I can only pray this sensible law makes it to North America.
For those downvoting - are you a shill for Google? Try reading the form itself to appreciate how exceedingly reasonable it is:
A recent ruling by the Court of Justice of the European Union found that certain users can ask search engines to remove results for queries that include their name where those results are “inadequate, irrelevant or no longer relevant, or excessive in relation to the purposes for which they were processed.”
In implementing this decision, we will assess each individual request and attempt to balance the privacy rights of the individual with the public’s right to know and distribute information. When evaluating your request, we will look at whether the results include outdated information about you, as well as whether there’s a public interest in the information—for example, information about financial scams, professional malpractice, criminal convictions, or public conduct of government officials.
You'll note this is the privacy that Eric Schmidt already enjoys, or at least believes he should enjoy, whether it's using lawyers to get one his many mistresses' blog yanked from the internet [1], or when he tried to get his political donations pulled from google search:
Mr. Schmidt, Google’s outspoken chief who will be replaced by Mr. Page on
Monday, has made public gaffes when speaking about privacy. Mr. Levy reveals
that he has made gaffes inside the company, too. Mr. Schmidt asked that
Google remove from the search engine information about a political donation
he had made. Sheryl Sandberg, a Google executive who is now Facebook’s chief
operating officer, told him that was unacceptable. [2]
And of course, there is always his infamous suggestion that people should change their name when they turn eighteen, in part to avoid google reporting every dumb thing they did as a child.
It's hard to say whether he's a sociopath or an entitled asshole, so I suggest compromise: he's an entitled sociopathic asshole.
The search engines aren't the ones losing out. This will not impact their bottom line.
We, the users, are missing out on the completeness of our search results. You already have no control over information about you. It has always been like that, people have been gossiping since the dawn of language. If something was published, then it should be in the index.
If you don't like it, take it up with the publisher. This is just like those ridiculous rulings on copyright infringement by linking to a copyrighted work.
And yes, everyone who downvotes you is a shill for Google at 0.2$/downvote. There's just no other explanation.
Search engines just index the web. If you have an issue with some stuff on the web, then go after the person hosting it, not the person telling you where it is.
> where they do not have control over information about themselves on the internet
The biggest gripe for me about this thing is that removing a link from google doesn't remove it from the website itself.
But people think they're safe once the can't find it via Google because Google is all they know. Especially in the age of removing URLs from the browsers input field and all.
Larry's request at TED a few months back that we have more faith in corporations shows how much we have already lost to the hands of an increasingly commercial internet. When it is clear that there is no neutral party to trust any more (gov nor corp) balkanisation through enforcement of new laws is a needed and natural effect.
I don't know why, but this creeps me out. This seems like such a hard balance to get right and also too much of a burden for search engines. Also, there is potential for abuse.
Sure, it is a hard balance to get right. But privacy is an important right and we should not throw it away because it creates some extra effort for a multi-billion dollar company.
I also find it weak that Page plays the 'think of the startups' card. In fact, I think that since the Snowden leaks, there are far more opportunities to create privacy-aware or privacy-protecting services. E.g., I am pretty sure that Duckduckgo, a startup in search, benefitted tremendously from the recent attention to privacy issues.
I actually have what I think is a valid reason to use this.
Years ago I created a friendfeed account. I used their Twitter signup button. Now years later I would like to close my friendfeed account to remove that information from the internet. There's nothing particularly bad about it but it's old, useless and I would rather it was deleted. The problem is I can't login into my account as I authorised through Twitter and I've since deleted my Twitter account. I also can't get in touch with anyone at friendfeed since they've shutdown but left their site up.
This ruling gives me a way to hide that friendfeed page from people. Unfortunately it will still be up but it's unlikely anyone will find it 'accidentally' if it isn't on Google.
I also agree that for reasons such as this (deleting an unwanted account) the ruling is useful. The real problem is demanding Google or other services like theirs to delete data that appears from other services, that Google has nothing to do with, other than indexing them. Of course you'd have to believe that once the data is gone from the parent host, it disappears from Google's cache, too, automatically.
But just asking Google to get rid of it doesn't make a lot of sense to me, and I think it unnecessarily punishes them, too. Think about the tens of millions of such requests they'd have to respond to every year in the future.
The ruling can be use for good and bad reasons.But I think it's important people can at least reach google in some special case,where a result from 10 year ago can be detrimental.
[+] [-] blazespin|12 years ago|reply
I for one have NO DESIRE for my children to grow up in a world where they do not have control over information about themselves on the internet. I can only pray this sensible law makes it to North America.
For those downvoting - are you a shill for Google? Try reading the form itself to appreciate how exceedingly reasonable it is:
A recent ruling by the Court of Justice of the European Union found that certain users can ask search engines to remove results for queries that include their name where those results are “inadequate, irrelevant or no longer relevant, or excessive in relation to the purposes for which they were processed.” In implementing this decision, we will assess each individual request and attempt to balance the privacy rights of the individual with the public’s right to know and distribute information. When evaluating your request, we will look at whether the results include outdated information about you, as well as whether there’s a public interest in the information—for example, information about financial scams, professional malpractice, criminal convictions, or public conduct of government officials.
[+] [-] x0x0|12 years ago|reply
It's hard to say whether he's a sociopath or an entitled asshole, so I suggest compromise: he's an entitled sociopathic asshole.
[1] http://gawker.com/5477611/googles-ceo-demanded-his-mistress-...
[2] http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/01/business/01author.html?_r=...
[+] [-] ars|12 years ago|reply
They are complaining that you are just removing it from google. The info is still there!
And not only that, it's only removed from google.co.{eu*} google.com will still have it.
Which makes it as stupid of a law as the one about cookies: Make it look like you are helping privacy while actually doing nothing of any value.
Anyone from the EU who wants the full scoop about someone will just use the US google site, making this a completely pointless exercise.
[+] [-] spindritf|12 years ago|reply
We, the users, are missing out on the completeness of our search results. You already have no control over information about you. It has always been like that, people have been gossiping since the dawn of language. If something was published, then it should be in the index.
If you don't like it, take it up with the publisher. This is just like those ridiculous rulings on copyright infringement by linking to a copyrighted work.
And yes, everyone who downvotes you is a shill for Google at 0.2$/downvote. There's just no other explanation.
[+] [-] chrismcb|12 years ago|reply
Search engines just index the web. If you have an issue with some stuff on the web, then go after the person hosting it, not the person telling you where it is.
This is akin to shooting the messenger.
[+] [-] llii|12 years ago|reply
The biggest gripe for me about this thing is that removing a link from google doesn't remove it from the website itself.
But people think they're safe once the can't find it via Google because Google is all they know. Especially in the age of removing URLs from the browsers input field and all.
[+] [-] tuukkah|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cyphunk|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] arrrg|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] microtonal|12 years ago|reply
I also find it weak that Page plays the 'think of the startups' card. In fact, I think that since the Snowden leaks, there are far more opportunities to create privacy-aware or privacy-protecting services. E.g., I am pretty sure that Duckduckgo, a startup in search, benefitted tremendously from the recent attention to privacy issues.
[+] [-] throwwit|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Fuxy|12 years ago|reply
If You can make a decentralized search engine that indexes everything no exceptions you would still find it.
Or you could make your own. It doesn't make it impossible to find just impossible for the average person.
[+] [-] yuhong|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rmc|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] porcogordo|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rnnr|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] k-mcgrady|12 years ago|reply
Years ago I created a friendfeed account. I used their Twitter signup button. Now years later I would like to close my friendfeed account to remove that information from the internet. There's nothing particularly bad about it but it's old, useless and I would rather it was deleted. The problem is I can't login into my account as I authorised through Twitter and I've since deleted my Twitter account. I also can't get in touch with anyone at friendfeed since they've shutdown but left their site up.
This ruling gives me a way to hide that friendfeed page from people. Unfortunately it will still be up but it's unlikely anyone will find it 'accidentally' if it isn't on Google.
[+] [-] higherpurpose|12 years ago|reply
But just asking Google to get rid of it doesn't make a lot of sense to me, and I think it unnecessarily punishes them, too. Think about the tens of millions of such requests they'd have to respond to every year in the future.
[+] [-] camus2|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mike_hearn|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] andybak|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] globalpanic|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jve|12 years ago|reply
This is probably what author did. :/
[+] [-] hellbreakslose|12 years ago|reply
It's called LAW! You don't BOW to it, you OBEY.
What would FT do in Google case? form an army and go fight against the EU?... Sick of reading articles like that.
Its sad that the EU is voting those laws, but its not Google fault of trying to be a legal company...
[+] [-] happyscrappy|12 years ago|reply