Google ends notification of ‘right to be forgotten’ removals

The decision follows a ruling by a Swedish court that notifying webmasters about delisted content breaches privacy

Google has ceased notifying publishers about the removal of websites from its search results under the European “right to be forgotten” regulations. This change follows a ruling by a Swedish court, and Google is implementing it globally.

Previously, when individuals requested the removal of records about them under EU data protection laws, Google would inform the publishers of the original articles.

Media companies, such as the Guardian, are mostly exempt from these regulations. However, links to journalistic content can still be removed from databases, including those of search engines.

Google now only notifies publishers that a URL has been removed, without providing details on the content or the reason for removal.

This situation leaves journalists unable to identify instances where the right to be forgotten has been misused to conceal legitimate reporting on repeat offenders and hinders their ability to contest the most severe abuses of this right.

A Google spokesperson stated, “We implemented our new notification approach following a ruling by Sweden’s data protection authority. This ruling came into effect in December 2023, after the Swedish administrative supreme court denied us the right to appeal.”

While we disagreed with the decision initially, we recognize that it is binding and aligns with pan-EU regulatory guidance. As a result, we have made a concerted effort to comply with it.

One of the changes brought about by GDPR in 2016 was to establish that EU national court rulings on data protection establish precedent throughout the bloc.

In its December ruling, the Swedish court determined that notifying webmasters about the removal of links to their content by the search engine violated the privacy of the individual requesting the right to be forgotten.

According to the International Association of Privacy Professionals, the administrative court reasoned that an individual’s interest in effectively protecting their privacy and personal data, after Google has approved the removal of a search result, generally outweighs Google’s interests until it notifies webmasters.

The court upheld a fine of SEK 50 million (£3.8 million) against the search engine for failing to remove URLs that had been requested to be delisted.

Shortly after the initial May 2014 court ruling that established Google’s obligation to honor the right to be forgotten, six Guardian articles were removed from the European versions of the search engine.

Three of these articles were related to Dougie McDonald, a former Scottish Premier League referee who retired. McDonald had been discovered in 2010 to have lied about the reasons for awarding a penalty during a football match. The other articles included a 2002 piece about a solicitor facing a fraud trial and a 2011 article about French office workers creating art with Post-it notes.

Over the next five years, Google received nearly one million distinct requests to be forgotten. Despite rejecting more than half of these requests, the search engine still removed almost 1.5 million individual URLs.