Google To Censor US Search Site For European Users

Forbes | Emma Woollacott | February 10, 2016

(Philippe Huguen/AFP/Getty Images)

Google is removing the loophole allowing European users to sidestep the ‘right to be forgotten’ ruling that censors their search results.

After the European Court of Justice ruled two years ago that people could ask for search results to be removed if they contained inaccurate or ‘outdated’ information, Google attempted to strike a compromise.

It complied with the order – but only for European versions of its website. This meant that European users wanting to see uncensored results have only to log on to Google.com to get the unedited version; and plenty do.


This state of affairs, as you might imagine, isn’t good enough for the European authorities, and in September last year the French data protection authority, CNIL, ordered the company to start removing offending content from its sites worldwide.

And while the initial fine was set at just €300,000 – a drop in the ocean for a company with annual revenues of about $66 billion – Google was told this could rise to an extraordinary 5% of global operating costs under new data protection legislation set to come in next year.

And now, says Reuters, the company’s come up with another compromise: to censor non-European domains, but only when they’re being accessed from the country where the right to be forgotten request has been made.

For example, if a British citizen made a successful removal request, nobody accessing Google search from the UK would be able to see the removed item, whichever national version of Google they used. Anybody searching the same domain from outside the EU, meanwhile, would see the full list of results.