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FORGET OUR PAST, 12,000 Europeans implore Google

Digital Foreign Legion recruiting rapidly

A widely distributed report by Agence-France Presse quotes a Google official as saying 12,000 Europeans have asked the ad-slinging giant to omit some search results linked to their name.

Of course, the web giant can simply ignore the requests, and send the complainants to information commissioners or the courts to deal with.

Last Friday, Google create an online form offering Eurozone citizens the chance to inform it about material they'd like the ad company's search sideline to ignore in future, to comply with a recent European Court of Justice decision.

If the AFP report is correct, Europe clearly houses a decent number of folks who want Google to just forget they ever existed, at least partially. And that's just the day one total: how many more might Google have collected over the weekend as Europeans had a chance to hit the keyboards at home?

How long, too, before complaints surface that Google hasn't scrubbed the web clean enough for some?

Google's admitted that the form it has put in place is a placeholder for proper processes it will develop in the near future. The Chocolate Factory remains grumpy it has to make these efforts, arguing that it is hard to balance the public's right to know and individuals' desire for privacy but that regulation is not the best way to approach the problem. ®

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