The Wall Street Journal reported on how Google decides on what to remove based on the EU's Right To Be Forgotten (RTBF) mandate.
It requires Google to remove content from their search results when the content is harmful and no longer relevant - it actually gets way more complex than that.
The WSJ documents that Google has meetings every Wednesday to make decisions on what to remove and what not to remove based on the RTBF requests and submissions. And the decision is pretty much in Google's hand.
The court gave little guidance on how requests should be decided, beyond saying that search results should be scrubbed if they include links to information that is inadequate, irrelevant, excessive or outdated.That largely left Google on its own to figure out where to draw the line. The case, which established what is informally known as the “right to be forgotten,” has prompted more than 250,000 requests covering more than 920,000 links, as of Tuesday. Google has agreed to remove 35% of the links submitted and declined to remove 50%, with 15% still under review.
It is a very manual process, requiring Googlers to discuss each on a case by case basis.
Here is a chart from the WSJ on the removals:
I wonder how one gets to work on Google's RTBF decision making team?
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
