Google is restricting the search results for certain articles, based on the complaints of people who are mentioned in them. Here are some of the first articles to be affected.
In May, Google started allowing people in Europe to request that articles about them to be removed from its search results. We now know what kind of thing people wouldn't like you to see.
If there's an article about you on the internet and you don't like it, you can appeal to Google for it not to appear in search results when someone searches for your name in Europe.
This is all because of an EU Court of Justice ruling which gives people the right to request that "irrelevant" or outdated information about them be taken down – known as the "right to be forgotten".
This week European publishers started to be affected by this, receiving the notification, via Google Webmaster: "Notice of removal from Google Search: we regret to inform you that we are no longer able to show the following pages from your website in response to certain searches on European versions of Google."
Two important points:
- Google doesn't say exactly who makes the complaints – all we know is that someone mentioned in these articles has applied to the "right to be forgotten" scheme.
- Google isn't asking publishers to remove anything, nor is it taking things out of its search index entirely. Google is restricting search results, meaning that while searching for someone's name might have previously brought up a news article about them in the past, if they've applied to this scheme you now might not see it.
Here are the stories that someone would rather you didn't read.
Scott Olson / Getty
A 2007 blog post by the BBC's economics editor, Robert Peston, about Stan O'Neal, the former CEO and chairman of Merrill Lynch.
Peston wrote with some alarm about the takedown this morning, writing: "What it means is that a blog I wrote in 2007 will no longer be findable when searching on Google in Europe."
However he later admitted in an update to the post that the original article was still findable via Google. It seems that the complainant wasn't O'Neal but one of the 27 commenters below the line.
A 2002 Guardian article about solicitor who was facing a £1.6 million fraud trial standing to join the ruling council of the Law Society.
A 2010 Guardian article about a referee who lied about reversing the decision to award a penalty during a Glasgow Celtic match.
