France to Google: remove worldwide search results or else...
The failure of Google’s appeal to quash a French court order that mandates the extension of the “right to be forgotten” (RTBF) worldwide will ultimately affect the search giant’s global Internet services and domains. This court order also affects other search engines such as Bing and Yahoo.
Through a court order, the Commission Nationale de l’Informatique et des Libertés (CNIL) ordered Google last May to apply RTBF requests not only to the company’s European domains such as google.co.uk or google.fr but to the search engine’s global domain, google.com.
The judgment empowers private citizens in Europe to request that search engines delete obsolete, irrelevant or inaccurate information about them. The court ruled that the legal processing of accurate data could become “inadequate”, “irrelevant” or “excessive” over time in the eyes of the private citizens that are subjects of the search.
The French data regulator ordered Google to extend its data scrubbing to all of its indices to prevent Google from circumventing the ruling by opting to retain this information on its global domains. As a result, Google will be compelled to remove tens of thousands of search results from its global domains and Internet services.
Google’s expressed disagreement with CNIL’s order in its blog post right after receiving a formal notice from CNIL.
“If the CNIL’s proposed approach were to be embraced as the standard for Internet regulation, we would find ourselves in a race to the bottom,” said Peter Fleischer, Global Privacy Counsel of Google.
In its appeal, Google told Quartz about its vehement disagreement with CNIL’s assertion it has global authority to control the content of a search engine. France’s data protection authority has listed numerous reasons for rejecting Google’s argument.
The Guardian reported that "CNIL will likely begin to apply sanctions including the possibility of a fine in the region of €300,000 against Google, should the company refuse to comply with the order. Under incoming French regulation the fine could increase to between 2% and 5% of global operating costs."
Under French law, Google may only appeal the decision and the fine should it refuse to comply with the order.
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