Google wins case in top EU court on ‘right to be forgotten’

The European Union’s top court on Tuesday ruled that Google doesn’t have to extend the region’s “right to be forgotten” rule to countries that are not under the union’s rule.

The case started with a 2014 ruling that decided people have the right to control what appears when their name is searched and can ask the search engine to take down a link, according to The Associated Press.

{mosads}But the court ruled in favor of the search engine after a French regulator’s request that the rule apply to all Google domains, even beyond the EU.

The court ruled there “is no obligation under EU law for a search engine operator” to extend the rule beyond EU states, according to the AP. 

The court reportedly said, however, that Google must put measures in place to discourage users from going outside the EU for the information removed within the region. 

Users can easily switch to an outside of EU version of the search engine by going to google.com rather than google.fr, or another EU-based version of the website. 

Google had argued that the rule, if applied outside the EU, could be abused by authoritarian governments to cover up human rights abuse, BBC reports.

Google’s senior privacy counsel Peter Fleischer said in a statement “it’s good to see that the Court agreed with our arguments.”

“Since 2014, we’ve worked hard to implement the right to be forgotten in Europe, and to strike a sensible balance between people’s rights of access to information and privacy,” he added. 

Updated at 8:43 a.m.