Google Fight on Right to Be Forgotten Is EU Case of Deja Vu

  • Search engine battling French call to remove links globally
  • Google only removes certain links from European search results
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Google’s fight against France’s bid to enforce the so-called right to be forgotten globally is headed to the European Union’s top court, just three years after its judges ordered the company to strip out some results that people find embarrassing or out of date.

The EU Court of Justice will now have to decide whether links should be purged from internet searches in one country, across the EU or globally. It will also have to rule whether Google should be required to block users from seeing the links. These questions were put to it by France’s Conseil d’Etat, the country’s highest administrative court, in a dispute between Google and the French privacy watchdog over what Google’s responsibility is for pulling information from the web.