BBC has lodged strong protests over the removal of its economics editor, Robert Peston’s article on former Merrill Lynch boss, Stanley O’Neal, which was written and published seven years ago on the British media giant’s website. Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOGL) informed Peston by an email that his piece is being removed by Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOGL) to honor the “right to be forgotten online” law which was made in order to remove the outdated or personal information on any individual in case the individual appeals and make his case valid in courts. In a program on Bloomberg, expert, Rosalind Chin, said that latest step by Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOGL) has caused a confusion regarding whether we should strive for freedom of information or privacy.
“The question here is, is it a freedom of information that we are concerned about or privacy, the EU law actually is meant to be protecting individual’s privacy and it’s says that the individuals have the right under certain circumstances to ask search engines to remove links with personal information about them,” said Chin.
Shortly after the removal of his article, Petson tweeted an angry statement in which it accused Google Inc (GOOGL) of lying to him that it has receive more than 50,000 requests to remove the article.
The article was about how Stan O’Neal was forced to leave the investment bank after he made careless investment decisions which caused massive damage to bank’s capital and resources. Chin said that the ruling made by courts that individuals can request the removal of links about them is a big headache for Google. Which request to accept which to reject is a matter of minute inspection which can cause massive problems for the tech giant in the future. She also said that Google Inc (GOOGL) was not alone in revealing the truths about O’Neal. Some other newspapers like Guardian also wrote about O’Neal’s bad decisions.
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