Internet giant Google has rejected a directive from the
French data protection regulator to carry out a so-called right to be forgotten across its search engine websites. CNIL ordered the firm last month to
offer the right to be forgotten not just on the Google.fr domain, but also on the
Google.com website. The move was in line with the May 2014 ruling by the EU Court of
Justice which determined that individuals could request website operators to remove personal
data from their sites in cases where there is no associated public interest to consider.
Google has since received in excess of 250,000 requests to remove listings in its search engine to some one million individual web pages. If Google does not comply with the requests,
users can file a complaint with EU regulators such as CNIL. Following these kinds of complaint, the French regulator ordered Google to widen its delisting policy to include Google.com as well as its European pages.
Google said it could not allow one country to determine a policy globally.
"We believe that no one country should have the authority to control what
content someone in a second country can access," it noted. In addition it termed CNIL's direction "disproportionate and unnecessary" as around
97% of French web users consume a European version of the firm's search engine such as Google.fr, rather than Google.com. Finally, the company said it would
"respectfully disagree" with the CNIL determination and requested it to rescind the order.