This initiative would oblige the IT company not only to delist or erase information from France’s search engines on demand of its citizens, — as it used to be before, — but to do the same on the other versions of Google browsers.
If Google does not submit the new amendment, its French affiliate could be sanctioned and required to pay out up to €300,000 in fines, according to Wall Street Journal.
Commenting on the company’s denial to adhere to the ruling, a spokesperson said that “[Google] respectfully disagree[s] with the idea that a national data protection authority can assert global authority to control the content that people can access around the world.”
The issue first came about in 2014 when Spanish resident Mario Costeja González won a court lawsuit against Google, forcing the company to remove information about him. The man claimed then that he had won a fight for his honor and pointed out that information undermining person’s dignity should be eliminated from any network despite freedom of speech requirements.
Since then Google has received more than 290,000 requests for deleting information about users and removed over a million of links, according to company’s report. The requests came from a vast range of people, including criminals and public officials.
