Google has received over 145,000 ‘right to be forgotten’ requests from Europe since the official request process was rolled out on May 29.
The search engine giant in its latest internet transparency report revealed that it has received more than 145,000 requests from all across Europe, with 18,304 coming from the UK alone. Google after evaluating approved 35 per cent of the UK requests in total.
The search giant introduced its request process following a European Court of Justice ruling in May that invests individuals with right to get irrelevant and outdated data erased from search engine results.
Facebook, with 3,353 URLs de-linked, was the most affected website, followed by social network search engine, Profile Engine, with 3,298 links removed and Google’s own YouTube website which had 2,397 URLs de-linked.
The country which holds the title for making the maximum number of request across the EU was France with 29,010 requests, followed by Germany, with 25,078 requests and the UK for the third place with 18,304 requests.
Some examples of ‘right to be forgotten’ requests that Google turned down includes one which came from a UK media professional who asked to remove four links to articles reporting on embarrassing content he posted to the web.
Another came from a public official who asked the search giant to remove a link to a student organisation’s petition demanding his removal.
The request of a doctor who petitioned the search engine to remove more than 50 links to news stories about a botched procedure removed, was also not met with. Only three that included the doctor’s personal details, but did not mention the procedure, were removed from search results, the rest remained.
