Google last week started sending emails to those who requested that their information be pulled from search results in Europe, and now we know what's covered in some of those takedown requests.
Reporters from the BBC and The Guardian today revealed that they received notices from Google about the removal of some of the publications' articles from the EU version of the search engine.
The Guardian's James Ball said that six of the paper's articles has been removed from Google search across the pond, while a 2007 blog post from the BBC's Robert Peston will be pulled shortly.
At issue is a case that dates back to 1998, when a man attempted to have a newspaper article about his Social Security debts scrubbed from Google search results. In June 2013, Google won an appeal in the EU's high court, which found that search engines are not required to remove such links, provided that publication of the data is legal.
But that decision was overturned in May, and Google is now required to review takedown requests and honor those that meet certain requirements.
The BBC post in question is about Stanley O'Neal, the former CEO and chairman of the board at Merrill Lynch. The BBC's Peston said he was puzzled as to why this post met Google's threshold for removal. "My column describes how O'Neal was forced out of Merrill after the investment bank suffered colossal losses on reckless investments it had made," he wrote. "Is the data in it 'inadequate, irrelevant, or no longer relevant.'" Peston has asked Google if there is a way to appeal certain removals, and the search giant said it would get back to him. At The Guardian, Ball said that three of the six articles in question are about Scottish Premier League referee Dougie McDonald, who found himself in the midst of scandal regarding a penalty. On Google.com, searching for "Dougie McDonald Guardian" returns the articles in question. But "type the exact same phrase into Google.co.uk, however, and the articles have vanished entirely. McDonald's record is swept clean," Ball said. The other pieces cover French office workers who made post-it art, a solicitor who was facing a fraud trial in 2002, and a week of columns from Guardian media commentator Roy Greenslade. Ball and Peston acknowledge that Google has complied with these "right to be forgotten" requests reluctantly, and fought efforts to allow them. Now it's up to the publishers to make a fuss, Ball said. Short of legal action and moving to other search engines, he suggested that media outlets set up Twitter accounts that tweet the links of articles that have been pulled from Google every time a notification comes in.