Re: Why would I not be surprised
As far as I understand, the process really is "Ask Google, and if they say no, appeal to the data protection authorities". Essentially, the data protection authorities don't have the kind of resources and money to treat all the requests, and the hope is that Google will accept or reject for clear reasons most of the applications.
I suspect the data protection authorities have been swamped with requests from individuals, and have asked Google to put up a form as soon as possible. Considering they got taken by surprise by the ruling two weeks ago, Google probably still don't have a clue of how the reviewing process will look like and what rules they will use for taking a decision, but at least now they can take applications.
A lot of the applications can probably be refused easily ("Sorry, politicians and celebrities don't benefit from the right to be forgotten"), but a lot of the rest will be unclear. How many years until an arrest for theft is irrelevant? For robbery? For murder? What if the criminal was a minor? There are no clear laws on the subject, considering the case of the Spanish guy had to be referred all the way to the European Court of Justice in order to have a clear decision.
Since nobody has a clear idea what the limits are exactly, Google is going to take decisions, trying to guess what the data protection authorities would decide. In cases that are on the limit, they will tend to reject applications, because they don't like to remove stuff from their results unless they absolutely have to.
Internally, what Google will do is first write up general guidelines, then hire a team of cheap people somewhere in India to go through applications and take the easiest decisions; the more complicated decisions will be escalated to less cheap people in Europe, and for really complicated decisions, an expensive lawyer will be called.
But all in all I would assume months are going to pass before the first decision is taken.