Google receiving 10,000 search result removal requests a day
Google has received 41,000 requests in just four days from people hoping to have search results about themselves deleted from the search engine results pages (SERPs), the Wall Street Journal reports.
That amounts to roughly 10,000 requests per day, or 7 requests per minute. The European Court of Justice ruled last month that search engines must give their users the option to request information about themselves or their company that they see “irrelevant, outdated or inappropriate” be removed from the search results.
The judges also stated that Google, and other search engine providers, are “controllers” who are processing personal data on the site.
The “activity of a search engine is additional to that of publishers of websites and is liable to affect significantly the fundamental rights to privacy and to the protection of personal data” and that Google is “obliged to remove links to web pages” in certain circumstances.
This has put an unprecedented amount of pressure on Google and other search engine companies who must now reorganize their staffing structures and hire new staff members to deal with the extra work load that the ruling has created.
Related:
- Google launches search removal tool after EU ‘Right to be forgotten’ ruling
- Will Google losing EU privacy case make any difference?
