Google: 18,000 UK requests under 'right to be forgotten'

Google has received almost 150,000 requests to be for "forgotten" under the European Court of Justice's ruling that people have the "right to be forgotten" under European Union law.

The company claims that it has received 145,000 requests, with 18,304 coming from the UK. According to Google, it approved 35 per cent of the requests made, de-linking 18,459 URLs from its search engine so that the results would not appear. Facebook was the website most affected, with 3,353 URLs de-linked, while Google's own YouTube website had 2,397 URLs de-linked, and directory enquiries website 192.com had 1,412 de-linked.

However, the country making the most requests was France, with 29,010, followed by Germany, with 25,078 requests.

The so-called right to be forgotten was introduced in May when Mario Costeja Gonzalez won a case in the European Court of Justice against Google. He had claimed that it was a violation of his right to privacy when the search engine returned a news article about the repossession of his house when searches using his name as a search term was used.

González has argued that as the matter had been resolved - his home had been auctioned off to pay his outstanding debt - that a search of his name should no longer return this information.

As a result of the court ruling, search engines with operations in Europe have been forced to set-up processes to respond to requests to de-link content in their search engines.

However, opponents of the ruling claim that it will be mis-used to help people whitewash their background. Indeed, Google claims to have received a number of such requests, including one from a UK media professional that the company de-link four articles relating to embarrassing content he had posted on the internet.

Another request came from a public official who asked for links to a student petition demanding his removal be hidden in Google search results. That request was also rejected.

Google's acquiescence in requests were often based on local laws, such as one from a man requesting that a link to a newspaper article on a court judgment be removed as under the UK Rehabilitation of Offenders Act, his conviction would be regarded as spent.