back to article Google’s dot-com forget-me-not bomb: EU court still aiming at giant

Google’s argument that its .com domain is not relevant in so-called "right to be forgotten" requests in Europe will not stand up in court, according a senior legislator at the European Commission. Speaking at the Academy of European Law’s data protection event in Paris on Thursday, Paul Nemitz, the outspoken director of the …

  1. Chris Miller

    A Brussels fonctionnaire writes:

    Gosh, you mean these interweb thingies spread outside Europe? Who knew??

    1. Dazed and Confused

      Re: A Brussels fonctionnaire writes:

      > Gosh, you mean these interweb thingies spread outside Europe? Who knew??

      Can't be a real Brusselsite then, they don't accept there is anywhere outside of Europe.

      1. Trigonoceps occipitalis

        Re: A Brussels fonctionnaire writes:

        "Gosh, you mean these interweb thingies spread outside Europe? Who knew??"

        Sort of like an old map - "Here be dotcoms"

    2. ecofeco Silver badge

      Re: A Brussels fonctionnaire writes:

      Upvotes for everyone!

  2. Khaptain Silver badge
    Facepalm

    Limted intelligence failure

    I regret that I am not intelligent/courageous enough to create something that was in competition with Google but without the lying, cheating, scare mongery , I'm so rich that I can sway any government tactics that Google employ.

    Just how much money/power do they really need.

    The facepalm is for me because Google make me feel very insignificant, probably because I am .

    1. RyokuMas
      FAIL

      Re: Limted intelligence failure

      "I regret that I am not intelligent/courageous enough to create something that was in competition with Google but without the lying, cheating, scare mongery"

      I refer you to the case of Laker Airways - back in 1977, a businessman spotted a possible gap in the air travel market, namely low-cost, no-frills flights, and tried (possibly intelligently/courageously) to take make a business out of this opportunity.

      Less than five years later, the company went bankrupt. Yes, the recession of the early 80s played a part in this, but the finishing blows were dealt by longer established competitors that deliberately undercut Laker, knowing that they could weather the financial loss until their upstart competitor was out of business.

      The argument that someone is not intelligent or courageous enough to create a viable competitor to Google is complete rubbish - Google is the highest value tech brand in the world, and should a competitor look like they are likely to make any kind of inroad into their massive land grab, it would be a simple matter for Google to either buy them out or run them out of business.

      1. Khaptain Silver badge

        Re: Limted intelligence failure

        >>The argument that someone is not intelligent or courageous enough to create a viable competitor to Google is complete rubbish

        I simply stated the "I" am not capable, undoubtedly someone else is, but that person is not me...

      2. tom dial Silver badge

        Re: Limted intelligence failure

        If someone were actually to put up a search engine that gave better results than Google, it would gain users at Google's expense. Google might try, and might succeed, in buying it, but could not reduce their end price to users to undercut it.

        On the other hand, a quick examination of google.co.uk, google.de, and google.es suggests that Mr. Costejo Gonzalez has been remarkably unsuccessful if his intent was that his earlier tax troubles have been "forgotten" by anyone - the results seem about on a par with those from google.com, and somewhat better than those from DuckDuckGo.

      3. ecofeco Silver badge

        Re: Limted intelligence failure

        Excellent example regarding Laker Airways. Have no idea why anyone would down vote you.

        It's called "predatory pricing" and Microsoft has also been guilty of it almost from their first decade in business.

        As have many, many other large corporations.

        1. poopypants

          @ecofeco Re: Limted intelligence failure

          The downvotes were probably because predatory pricing cannot be applied when your product is free.

    2. ecofeco Silver badge

      Re: Limted intelligence failure

      Free? You folks do know what Google makes money from, right? Their public search engine is just a small part of their empire.

      Making it free is the predatory pricing part.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    European ruling

    If rulings by any European court apply to the .com site too, then logically the Chinese or any other (like North Korean) court rulings would apply too. This way any tinpot dictatorship could demand that Google removes any criticism of their ruler or government.

    1. I ain't Spartacus Gold badge

      Re: European ruling

      In the end, you follow the money. The EU can easily rule on what happens under European domains. In the end, if some foreign company ignores your jurisdiction, you take their domain away. As that is within range of your courts.

      At the other extreme, a company operating entirely outside of your jurisdiction and using a foreign domain is pretty hard to get at.

      But the EU is a huge market of 500 million people. And Google makes much money selling advertising to companies that want to reach them. Many of these companies are in Europe. So there's a nice revenue stream for the legislators and courts to get at. Also Google employs many people here.

      So Google is perfectly happy to ignore North Korea's instructions on what websites it can link to. There's no money or corporate presence. They pulled out of mainland China, to avoid the hassle of censorship. But China doesn't tell them what to put on Google.com, they simply (try to) block it at the border. Their leverage was limited, because Google didn't make that much cash in China.

      In Europe, Google makes tens of billions a year. So it'll pay more taxes if it has to, and it'll comply with laws it doesn't like, if it's forced to. Because there's gold in them thar hills.

      I guess the compromise may be that Google are forced to have a European version of their .com to go with their country specific domains. Which means you can get round it with a non-EU proxy.

      1. Sirius Lee

        Re: European rulingNo

        Not so sure your conclusion is valid. If the EU courts decides that Google must remove links from the .com site they will have contravened the law of their HQ's country opening them up to law suits there. An alternative is that they willingly ensure that the .com address is not available to browsers that have an IP address within the EU.

        Google will continue to earn money from the country sites (.uk, .de, .fr, etc.) because that's how most of us here access the Google brand. However EU citizens will be the losers as they will no longer be able to see the world as others see it. Instead, we will see as Brussels wants us to see it and to my mind that's not a much better prospect that that for Chinese citizens.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: European ruling

      Rulings by US courts of US laws (eg. DMCA) already apply to all of Google's domains, so why not EU laws as well?

      1. Irony Deficient

        Re: European ruling

        Anonymous Coward, perhaps because Google Inc. is incorporated in California, which causes it to prioritize US legal requirements?

  4. Robert Simmons
    WTF?

    Geo-location?

    "Google representatives at the event pointed out that this was problematic since the information is protected in the US under the First Amendment."

    Here's an idea Google, you've already got identification of user based on country through Geo-location. You know, the function which recommends localized Google Search? So how come you can't apply the same as a filter on the search results? Or, dare I say it, enforce a redirect?

    Granted, IP Geo-location databases are usually out of date and change frequently, but that doesn't stop you from filtering based on the Issuing RIR, apply the above to any IP issued by RIPE, and you've just covered 95% of use cases.

    Simples.

    1. Marcus Aurelius

      Re: Geo-location?

      Because if Google does start doing this, I'm going to be using a US proxy to carry out all my searches.

    2. Adam 1

      Re: Geo-location?

      No offence but I would much prefer them to spend those few milliseconds figuring out the most applicable links that correlate to my search query, not figuring out locations of IP addresses to crosscheck umpteen blacklists and to exclude such results.

      If I was Google I would drop all connections from ECJ offices in protest. Or pummel them with random massive streams of data through JavaScript to fill their pipe.

      1. I ain't Spartacus Gold badge

        Re: Geo-location?

        If I was Google I would drop all connections from ECJ offices in protest. Or pummel them with random massive streams of data through JavaScript to fill their pipe.

        Or, I dunno, Google could just obey the law? Like the rest of us have to.

        They're perfectly entitled to lobby to get it changed. Also like the rest of us. The difference being they've got squillions of dollars, and a big old collection of media and academic cheerleaders to back them (not all of whom they pay for themselves).

        1. Fonant

          Re: Geo-location?

          > Or, I dunno, Google could just obey the law? Like the rest of us have to.

          Yeah, but the problem is: which law? EU, or USA?

          1. DavCrav

            Re: Geo-location?

            "Yeah, but the problem is: which law? EU, or USA?"

            Well, if you cannot obey laws with your business, you shouldn't be operating a business. If a business model is legal in the US (e.g., gun sales) and illegal in the EU (e.g., gun sales) then you cannot run a transnational US-EU company that operates in this sector. The solution? Split Google into Google US and Google EU. Or pull out of one of the two jurisdictions, because you cannot say "obeying your law would break the law in $favouriteJurisdiction, so I will break your law instead".

        2. Adam 1

          @Spartacus

          Reread my comment. I did not suggest that they could avoid compliance by blocking their IP range. There is no inherent contradiction between compliance with the law and choosing who wish to offer your services to.

          1. I ain't Spartacus Gold badge

            Re: @Spartacus

            Reread my comment. I did not suggest that they could avoid compliance by blocking their IP range. There is no inherent contradiction between compliance with the law and choosing who wish to offer your services to.

            Adam 1,

            This is true. However your comment did have the whiff of the Kevin the teenager "it's not fair" about it. Something I often see in commentary on legal disputes between internet companies and the law. And sometimes those comments come from the internet companies' bosses themselves...

            There's obviously a lack of trust in politics at the moment. Which puts lawmakers at a PR disadvantage. Also, I don't think society has yet fully decided what the internet is for, and therefore what should be allowed and what should be banned. We're still in the internet wild west phase. Things are changing much too quickly for society, law or politics to keep up.

            There's also a lot of utopianism out there. The kind that leads people to say things like, "information wants to be free", or "the internet interprets censorship as damage, and routes around it". That was all very well when the internet was young, full of academics and a small group of relatively well-off young-ish people. But the internet is big business now. And everyone can be on it. Which means crooks, children, little old ladies, global mega-corps, teenagers, advertising account executives, the whole lot. Will people put up with it being a total free-for-all? I doubt it. Will people demand regulation? I'm sure. Will other people complain about that regulation? That's politics. But the penalties of going mainstream are that the whole of society takes an interest, and then everyone wants their pound of flesh.

            Finally, I find it hard to feel sympathy for Google. I don't understand the free-ride that some people seem to give them. Here we have a corporation that makes $10 billion a year. And yet their attitude to the law sometimes seems to be that it doesn't apply to us because... Internet. Like it's a magic word.

            They've done lots of things that are good for society. And been well financially rewarded for it. The system has broadly worked in that sense. But their actions have had consequences. Some of those just to competitors. But sometimes effects on real people's privacy. Those people may need some kind of protection. Balancing the competing needs of different groups in society is what politics and the law are about. This whole area of law is going to be a problem for years.

            For example, what are we going to do about the millions of teened kids who've posted compromising stuff on the internet, when they come to apply for jobs? Are we going to condemn them to have blighted careers so Facebook and Google can continue to have an easy life? Or are we going to ban companies from looking online when they hire? Those are the 3 choices I can see being available. Now in 20 years, this may be a moot point. Many HR people will have their own compromising pictures in their own past, and probably won't care. But HR people now aren't from that generation, and so didn't grow up with the internet - so their attitudes may not be so generous. That could leave us with a potentially huge social problem that either employers, the internet giants or governments will have to solve. So far the internet giants' attitude seems to be, we've got all your data and it's now ours to do with as we please. I can't see that lasting forever. If they don't cut back on the levels of hubris, then I foresee a painful reckoning, either with the politicians, the customers, or both.

  5. Mage Silver badge

    .com

    Lots of people based in Europe only have dot com dot net etc due to over charging by TLD registrars for many European Countries. About x3 in many cases.

  6. Mage Silver badge

    Relevance

    Why is it so hard to search by date?

    i.e. Content created or changed since 2013 etc

    or Before 2001

    1. Tom 35

      Re: Relevance

      Relevance is BS code for Stuff you don't like.

      No one wants to remove old Good stuff that is just as (not) relevant as the Bad stuff they want to censor.

  7. Pen-y-gors

    google.co.uk

    If your isp location suggests uk, google.com seems to automatically redirect to google.co.uk - they're making an effort. So perfectly reasonable that uk court judgements are reflected on the .co.uk site, but not on the .com.

  8. Velv
    Coffee/keyboard

    This shows just how flawed the ECJ ruling is.

    The ECJ want the results filtered based on where the search takes place (I.e.inside Europe). So I'm sitting physically in Singapore but using my corporate provided laptop that is VPN'd into my US company and I exit the company to the Internet in New York. I'm doing research on behalf of a French company, so I use google.fr. Should the results be filtered?

    Search results should not be filtered. If there is material published that is out of date then the OUT OF DATE material should be removed.

  9. JimmyPage Silver badge
    Mushroom

    Hmmmm I await the Rumble in the Jungle --->

    or Thriller in Manila, as the ECJ ruling slams headfirst into the opposing (and equal ?) judge from the US supreme court that Google cannot infringe US citizens right to free speech ...

    note to El Reg: We need a popcorn icon :)

    1. Snowy Silver badge

      Re: Hmmmm I await the Rumble in the Jungle --->

      Nothing to do with free speech, does not stop people saying anything just makes it hard for people to listen. Free speech is not the same as a right to be heard.

      Having said that if the information is outdated or wrong they should go after that rather than the link to the information. Seems to me they are going after the low hanging fruit, seeing that it seems a lot easier to get the link removed rather than the information it links to.

      1. tom dial Silver badge

        Re: Hmmmm I await the Rumble in the Jungle --->

        I seem to recall that the Agencia Española de Protección de Datos declined to apply the obvious correction of requirintg La Vanguardia to remove from public view the article Mr. Costeja found objectionable. Perhaps this was due to the obvious infringement of the right, or even the requirement, to publish what, in this case, was a record of the Spanish government's official action.

        So instead of taking care of a perceived problem in the simplest, cheapest, and most effective way we are left with a costly, contentious, and relatively ineffective and easily gamed procedure to be implemented by anyone who operates a publicly accessible internet search service.

  10. briesmith

    The World Awaits Zimbabwe's Right to be Beaten to Death Quietly Ruling

    See the EU believe their European TLDs ruling should also apply to Google's .com suffix.

    I believe Mr Mugabe's lawyers are working as I type on their declaration that their country's ruling on the .zim TLD (or whatever it is; can't be arsed to Google it) also applies to every other TLD including .co.uk.

    There's some bollocks comes out of Brussels but this surely etre le bouquet.

    1. DavCrav

      Re: The World Awaits Zimbabwe's Right to be Beaten to Death Quietly Ruling

      "There's some bollocks comes out of Brussels but this surely etre le bouquet."

      They are saying "Google operates in both the EU and US. It cannot simultaneously obey both US and EU laws. Therefore shut down, pull out of one jurisdiction, split the company, or come up with a solution that obeys both sets of laws. Choose."

      Since Google doesn't like Options 1, 2 and 3, unsurprisingly they'll go for 4.

  11. Vociferous

    If you search within the EU, it *IS* applied to Google.com

    Also to Google.au, Google.cn etc.

    Google redirects all calls to the nearest data center, and all calls to European data centers are now censored. Test by pinging (you'll get same IP) or with one of the censored searches from e.g. the BBC.

    To get around the censorship, use https://www.google.com/ncr

    Also, free tip: if you want an article censored, post an obviously inappropriate comment to it under your own name, then issue a request to have the article forgotten.

    1. ratfox
      Stop

      Re: If you search within the EU, it *IS* applied to Google.com

      Also, free tip: if you want an article censored, post an obviously inappropriate comment to it under your own name, then issue a request to have the article forgotten.

      No. If you try to use this technique to censor an article about, say, Tim Cook, the article will not show anymore when searching for your own name; but it will still show up when searching for "Tim Cook".

      Do try to pay attention.

      1. Vociferous

        Re: If you search within the EU, it *IS* applied to Google.com

        > the article will not show anymore when searching for your own name; but it will still show up when searching for "Tim Cook".

        *False*

        Try with one of the censored searches.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: If you search within the EU, it *IS* applied to Google.com

      You sure about that? I'm in the US and if I go to google.com I get google.com. If I go to google.eu, I get google.co.uk (verified by looking at the CN for the certificate for each site)

      I can't try it in the EU, but if google.com automatically sends you to the UK version, and you need to go to google.us to get the US version, it seems like this is already solved and Google can tell the EU so.

      Another alternative could be for Google to block google.com entirely in the EU with some sort of message telling people why the link doesn't work, and providing them a link to google.eu they can click on, just to rub it in the EU's face that "yeah we're complying with your stupid ruling, but we're going to make sure all the people inconvenienced know who is inconveniencing them".

  12. Graham Marsden
    Facepalm

    Google goes into Kevin the Teenager Mode

    You want us to stop linking to oudated and incorrect results with *all* our search engines, not just the one that has your country at the end of the domian?

    That's *SO UNFAIR*!!!

    1. Adam 1

      Re: Google goes into Kevin the Teenager Mode

      Here's the thing.

      The search result is already correct.

      Correctness of a search engine relates to the ability to locate URLs that relate to the phrase you are searching for. They do not offer an opinion on the fitness for purpose or correctness of that information. If you search for a review of a car, the results may contain links to reviews by people who clearly have no clue, are biased towards or against a particular model or get specifications or prices wrong. That is where adults are expected to engage their brain and evaluate for themselves. If the information on this site is so bad that poor little Europe couldn't be trusted with it, then block it at the site itself.

      Censoring of search results is the realm of Beijing or Moscow rather than somewhere that values free media.

      1. Graham Marsden

        Re: Google goes into Kevin the Teenager Mode

        1) I, for whatever reason, take exception to Adam 1

        2) I create a whole load of pages on "bullet proof" hosts and those in countries which are beyond reach of libel laws saying that Adam 1 is a crook, a thief, a kiddy-fiddler, a drug dealer, a terrorist etc etc etc.

        3) Search engines start indexing them to the extent that anyone who ever searches for Adam 1 sees all *my* pages first.

        4) Adam 1 says,,,?

      2. I ain't Spartacus Gold badge

        Re: Google goes into Kevin the Teenager Mode

        Censoring of search results is the realm of Beijing or Moscow rather than somewhere that values free media.

        Adam 1,

        Sorry, but this argument is total bollocks. The old slippery slope argument.

        Censoring search results in a minor way in order to protect individuals may or may not be the right legal decision. But it's far from state control of all media. If voters fall asleep at the wheel, perhaps it'll lead to such, if they also happen to elect politicians who want to start a dictatorship, with optional reign of terror. But so far we don't have those politicians. Or the electorate to vote for them. And anyway this judgement came from the courts, not the politicians.

        It's an attempt to balance the freedom of the individual, with the right to information of society, and the rights of companies to make profits. It's obviously attempting to address the reality that individuals can't realistically issue take-down notices to every website, and so tries to short-cut the system by hitting the search engines. Whether it'll work is yet to be seen. Whether it's a good idea is up for debate. But whether it's going to lead to dictatorship is an easy one to answer - no it won't.

  13. ecofeco Silver badge

    I still don't understand this

    Why the hell is Google responsible for someone else's website? Or is this just the matter of what's in their data center cache? The later I would understand.

    Either way, Google did not create the website, the image, the text or any of the original content, so why the hell are they responsible in ANY way for someone getting their panties in a bunch up their buttcrack over something they did wrong or are embarrassed by in their past?

    Goddamn but the inbred aristocrats STILL don't understand the Internet... and it will be their downfall.

    1. James 100

      Re: I still don't understand this

      That's the insanity of it: having admitted that the information in question is correct and legitimate, so it would be wrong to demand that it be removed, they concoct the absurd compromise that somehow, censoring true and accurate search results pointing to that information instead is a better outcome.

      If there were a legitimate case for removing the information from the Internet, that would be another matter entirely: the page gets removed, Google's index then automatically deletes that entry shortly afterwards, end of problem. It's the judicial absurdity of "the information's legitimate, so it can stay online, but we'll force third parties to make it slightly more difficult to find" that bugs me: demanding that Google and others return less accurate search results to suit their whim.

  14. SleepyJohn
    Big Brother

    Manna from Spain for a power-hungry EU

    None of this has anything to do with a silly Spaniard trying to pretend his house was not repossessed, nor any spurious need to protect the public from access to 'out-of-date' or 'irrelevant' information (who defines those terms, I wonder?).

    This is the EU's well-trained political poodle court setting a dangerous precedent; one that will enable the unelected, unaccountable EU bosses to exert a gradual, but ever-increasing censorship of all information available to the luckless EU peasantry. They have probably been scouring Google for years looking for such an excuse. Quelle ironie!

    There is an acceptable case for even the EU's quasi-government to discuss with search engines the issue of relative importance of results. However, ordering them to be removed, on the dubious grounds that some person does not like what they say, carries the distinctly foul stench of a corrupt ulterior motive on the part of what can best be described charitably as a barely-concealed tinpot oligarchy.

    Google doesn't invent information: it finds and displays it, just as the BBC finds information and displays it. Will the BBC be next to have the information it displays censored by the EU? Ordered not to display anything that the EU deems 'irrelevant' or 'out-of-date'? Anything critical of the EU perhaps?

    Ridiculous, you all laugh, it is too big a step. Even if taken in small, emotive, ethically unarguable increments? This is the usual EU method for forcing through unpalatable proposals, a technique copied almost verbatim from sleazy Encyclopedia salesmen.

    Eg: Free multi-volume encyclopedia, with a small charge for regular updates to ensure that your adorable children get the best possible start in life. What parent could refuse? Even when a few moments' thought shows that it will cost them more money than their car. A few moments thought will also show that this EU ruling will cost the people more rights than it bestows.

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