Google Europe Blog, 30 July 2015
Google Refuses Global implementation of "Right to be Forgotten"
On 30 July 2015, Google's Global Privacy Council, Peter Fleischer, has posted that Google respectfully disagrees with the assertion that the "Right to be Forgotten" would have to be implemented globally. Following the Practical Guidelines issued by the Article 29 Data Protection Working Party in November 2014, the French Data Protection Authority (i.e. “Commission National de l’Informatique et des Libertés”, CNIL) had issued in May 2015 a formal notice requesting Google Inc. to apply delisting globally on all domain names of the search engine because the various geographical top Level domains used by Google Inc. merely represented different technical access paths to its central data processing (see Cullaffroz-Jover, CRi 2015, 126).
Google's Argument
Fearing "serious chilling effects on the web", Google states the belief that
"no one country should have the authority to control what content someone in a second country can access"
and presumes CNIL's order to be "disproportionate and unnecessary" because currently the overwhelming majority of French Internet users accesses Google via a European top level domain like e.g. 'www.google.fr'.
Next Step
If Google Inc. fails to comply with CNIL's formal notice, the CNIL’s President is entitled to initiate an administrative penalty procedure (see Cullaffroz-Jover, CRi 2015, 126).
(Ga)
Peter Fleischer, "Implementing a European, not global, right to be forgotten", Google Europe Blog, 30 July 2015
Cullaffroz-Jover, "France: Google Inc. On Notice for Global Implementation of ‘Right to be Forgotten’", CRi 2015, 126