The right to be forgotten was passed by the European Unions Court of Justice (ECJ) in May 2014 and refers to a landmark ruling. This regulation enables people to have results linked to their name removed from search websites if they are irrelevant. In response to this regulation results can end up removed even if those links point to objective published information like newspaper articles or official government websites according to Google.
Companies offering services to European citizens must comply with the ruling, even if their websites are not hosted in Europe. After reviewing 1.5 million requests, about 40% resulted in the removal of a search result, Google announced. Despite Google announcing that it will remove results when a valid right to be forgotten request is made, currently it does not remove the affected search results from all versions of its website worldwide according to bbc.com.
People using Google in Europe cannot find the deleted results using any version of the search engine - but people outside Europe can see the affected search results when they use a non-European version of the website such as google.com. The CNIL wants Google to remove the affected search results globally. Google has refused to remove content as this to could lead to abuse by some countries.
The company is now appealing against a EUR 100,000 CNIL fine.
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