Google deletes 260,000 links in ‘right to be forgotten’ purge
Google has revealed the full scale of its ‘right to be forgotten’ purge for the first time after admitting that it had deleted over 260,000 web links since the European court asserted individuals rights to anonymity.
Since the May ruling the search engine has been hit by a deluge of requests from people wishing to have ‘inaccurate, inadequate, irrelevant or excessive’ information wiped from the net – moves which have been criticised by culture secretary Sajid Javid who said the legislation was protecting terrorists and criminals.
Thus far Google has received 216,000 requests to delete 780,000 links from its search results, removing 261,000 of the 648,000 links which it has assessed thus far - in Britain alone more than 27,000 requests have now been made to hide 107,000 pages of info.
These requests are only followed through on Google’s European search domains such as google.co.uk, after free speech groups in the US successfully argued that a similar policy there would be unconstitutional but European regulators are pressing for action to be taken internationally.