Do Americans deserve a 'right to be forgotten' rule from Google?

[Commentary] Requiring companies to do something in the United States because they have to do it in Europe would set an ugly precedent that fails to recognize the continents' different legal and cultural traditions. More important, though, the European "right to be forgotten" is bad policy. It puts Google in the position to judge when truthful information that's been lawfully published and shared online is no longer relevant to the public. But what strikes Google as irrelevant might not be so inconsequential to a historian, a potential business partner, an investor or a fiancée. And there's precious little difference between removing the links to an item and making it disappear.

To use a pre-Internet analogy, it's as if someone embarrassed by a nonfiction book could order librarians to remove that title from the card catalog. The issue is a challenging one, but turning search engines into incomplete guides to the historical record is a bad idea.