Google Reinstates European Links to Articles From The Guardian

Google’s efforts to carry out a European court order on the “right to be forgotten” took another twist as the company restored search-engine links to several newspaper articles from The Guardian whose delinking had stirred a public furor only a day earlier.

As Google once again declined to explain its decision-making, the episode underscored the potentially bewildering complexities of trying to remove information from the Internet when people request it.

Analysts and public officials, many critical of the way Google is carrying out the court order, say the tumult could have far wider implications. That is because the order, issued in May by the European Court of Justice, dealt with a right to be forgotten that would be much more broadly interpreted in a sweeping digital privacy law that is now the subject of discussions involving the European Parliament, the European Commission and leaders of the 28 member countries of the European Union.

The company told The Guardian that several links to its articles had been reinstated in Google’s European search service after the newspaper complained. Some of the articles were from 2010 about a soccer referee, now retired, who had been accused of lying about why he had awarded a penalty kick in a match in Scotland.

Google declined to explain why it had removed the links, or its reasons for honoring The Guardian’s request to restore them. Critics said the episode highlighted a lack of transparency about how Google is carrying out the court order as it works through requests it has received for removing information, a number that has reached 70,000 and continues to grow.