Last Friday Google released a Right To Be Forgotten webform in wake of the European Union’s privacy case against the search engine. The request is catered towards to direct searches of peoples names, where personal privacy could be at stake. As a result Google has received (in the first four days) about 41,000 requests, at a steady 10,000 per day pace.
There have been no right to be forgotten approvals yet, and as requests pile up it is becoming a larger problem for Google, who’s mission is organize the world’s information and make it easily accessible. It is still unclear how Google will decide who will qualify to be removed from the search engine’s results. Google has assembled a committee to think through their dilemma, and have even consulted Jimmy Wales (co-founder of Wikipedia.org). The general rumor is that Google will approve requests that successfully argue that the information is outdated and when personal privacy outweighs the information provided to the public. It should be very interesting to see how Google handles this problem, how long it will take them, and what may result from it.