Right to be forgotten. Does Google delist search results from Google searches worldwide or only from European Google searches?

The purpose of this article is to update our clients on the latest position in relation to successful Right to be Forgotten applications and the current position regarding the removal of  search results from Google worldwide.

Following the Google Spain decision in 2014, Google started to remove offending links under a Right to be Forgotten from the Google searches but only from the applicant’s own country. So a successful Right to be Forgotten application made by a UK citizen would have resulted only in the removal of links to offending pages from Google.co.uk. This was highly unsatisfactory so law firms, including Cohen Davis Solicitors, had made repeated complaints to the Information Commissioner's Office until early in 2015 Google undertook to have offending

If you already made an application to Google under the right to be forgotten and your application was declined, you have a right to appeal to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), the regulator responsible for data protection in the United Kingdom, which has the power to overturn Google’s decisions.

"For most people the application to the ICO under the right to be forgotten is likely to be the very last opportunity ever to have information removed from Google searches and from the internet."

Adverse results from search engines can often have severe consequences, sometimes affecting you as an individual, sometimes affecting your family and at other times affecting your business. This will seem particularly unfair where the information presented by the search engine against your name or the name of your business is untrue, deceptive or very old.

Our client was employed as a manager by a company in the financial services industry. An article in a national newspaper (also published online) revealed some of the practices employed by that company and effectively had made our client a scapegoat to the company’s alleged wrongdoing.

When news broke out about the company’s alleged practices, it allowed our client to become a scapegoat and did nothing to try and defend its practices or our client’s position as an employee