Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) has complied with the European Union’s highest judicial court’s orders, bringing forth a new form of censorship of private information, never before seen in any search engine’s history.
Caroline Hyde a reported on Bloomberg Television, during the “Countdown,” stated:
“Basically on one side, they have got to balance the right of privacy of the individual, versus the right of public information; the right of transparency, and with humans based in Google, they are going to have to weigh up.”
She then goes on to elaborate about the new mechanism which Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) has come up with to remove old, outdated or damaging link that users feel must be removed. From today, an online document which Google Inc. has set up can be used to enter the URL addresses, along with some mandatory fields such as the Name, Country and the reason why the user feels that the link must be removed.
This information is reviewed by a set of Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG)’s employees who determine the validity of the user’s claim. If the result is still ambiguous, the claim is sent to a special advisory team, comprising of various eminent in the field of data protection, including the co-founder of Wikipedia, Jimmy Wales, and many scholars from various Universities. Hyde feels that careful examination of claims is essential because many would want certain links removed from the Internet, and the philosophical angles of claims need to be weighed carefully.
Hyde mentioned about the interview of Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG)’s CEO Larry Paige to the Financial Times where he was quoted discussing issues this ordering is going to bring for Startups. Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) has the money and expertise required to comply with the new rules. But the layer of complexities might make it much harder for the startups because of the lack of funding.
Hyde was a little worried about the new rules helping the suppressive governments.
“More worryingly, arguably more worryingly as I said, does it strengthen the hands of repressive governments? Does it mean that they can suppress the information even more? That is the key concern”
Here is the video from Bloomberg;
