Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOGL) complying with the landmark “right to be forgotten” ruling in Europe is not good for the internet, Ben Huh said in a discussion on Bloomberg.
Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOGL), the world’s foremost search engine by volume of searches, has just started to remove search results to comply with a ruling the European Union has handed down to protect people’s privacy in the region. In a report by Scarlet Fu, the whole issue was prompted by people seeking their “right to be forgotten”. Fu explained that “Google has begun removing search results after the EU rule that it needed to do so.”
In the report, Huh said that Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOGL) has to abide by the laws that it operates in. He asked, however, whether the search giant can remove the results by itself having to follow those laws and no one will ever find out. He added that it really is a matter of the EU having a different stance, particularly in Germany, on privacy.
In a discussion, Huh went on to say that this is not a good thing for the internet. Bloomberg’s Hans Nichols said that the standard in Europe regarding what data can be requested to be deleted is that it should be irrelevant or inadequate. The point of wanting harmful information, such as a bankruptcy filing which can be prejudicial in the case of prospect employers finding out, being requested by a person to be deleted was also raised later in the discussion.
According to Nichols, Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOGL) faces a two-front war in Europe: one in privacy and one in antitrust. In terms of the privacy issue, the company is making it possible for people to “wash, cleanse or purify” their online search record.
This is the point that Huh, CEO of The Cheezburger Network, said is harmful for the internet. Asked whether this is effectively just a check and balance development, Huh disagreed. He was told that it’s like having a recourse to delete information about oneself whereas before, if someone said something and was broadcast over the internet, one did not have a way to delete this information. He explained:
“There already has been recourse. You can actually take them to court. What the EU government is saying is you don’t need to go through the court system to do this anymore. You can actually go to Google directly. There’s a danger of precedent here in that people can censor each other without actual court and due process. This is not a good thing for the internet.”
Watch the video below where beer sales and World Cup statistics as well as Google’s antitrust issues in Europe were also discussed.
Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOGL) shareholders includes Murray Stahl’s Horizon Asset Management and William Duhamel’s Route One Investment Company which reported 40,587 and 37,875 shares respectively in the company by the end of March.
Disclosure: None
