France has submitted more “right to be forgotten“ removal requests than any other European nation, Google revealed in a 13-page response to European data regulators.

About 17,500 individual requests involving around 58,000 URLs were received from France, with Germany second with 16,500 requests. The UK’s 12,000 requests placed it third, with Spain, Italy and the Netherlands following with 8,000, 7,500 and 5,500 requests respectively.

The data was made public in Google’s lengthy response to questions raised by the EU’s Article 29 working party, after it was hauled in by Europe’s data protection authorities in July.

Article 29, the collective working party Europe major data regulators, left Google, Microsoft and Yahoo a 26-point questionnaire demanding answers after Europe’s displeasure with the current handling of “right to be forgotten” requests.

Around 53% removed

Google has removed about 53% of URLs requested, with more information requested for around 15% of URLs. Around 32% of requests have been denied.

The requests only affect European searches, which has led Google and others to only remove search results from their European domains, such as google.co.uk, google.fr or google.de. Requests from Germany, for instance, will only be removed from searches made through the google.de site.

Google says that fewer than 5% of European users use its US domain google.com, of which it suggests travellers from the US make up a significant portion.

The removals only affect web and image search, as well as Google News. It is unknown whether removals affect video searches.

‘Ensures transparency and makes corrections possible’

Regulators have shown particular displeasure over Google’s notification of publishers of link removals from its search results.

Peter Fleischer, Google’s Global Privacy Counsel, defended the practice saying that it was an important part of the balancing act between the rights of citizens and information being in the public interest, as well as catching false claims.

“The notice to webmasters both ensures transparency and makes corrections possible when a removal proves to be a mistake,” Fleischer said in the letter. “We have received information from webmasters that has caused us to re-evaluate removals and reinstate search results.”

Google does not yet have any formal way for publishers to respond to the removal notices.

“In many cases, we lack the larger factual context for a request, without which it is difficult to balance the competing interests,” Fleischer explained.

People conveniently forget to include current information that may affect a removal request, like a recent conviction as an adult when requesting the removal of links to news about juvenile convictions.

Google is beholden to the accuracy of the information that the requester submits in many cases, making decisions over some nuanced removals difficult.

‘Fifty per cent of removal requests originated with competitors targeting each others’ sites’

Fleischer explained that abuse of removals procedures is already occurring through the right to be forgotten ruling, saying that some professional journalists have asked Google to remove articles that they wrote for a publication that they no longer work for.

“We have seen see many cases of business competitors trying to abuse removals processes to reduce each others’ web presence,” he said. “We have also seen examples of data subjects who indiscriminately submit many URLs that are displayed as search results for their name, even though some URLs are actually about another person with the same name.”

“Abuse of such processes is a well-documented phenomenon – one academic study based on Google’s published information about copyright-based removals estimated that more than 50% of removal requests originated with competitors targeting each others’ sites for removal from search results,” said Fleischer.

Google also clarified how it goes about tackling removal requests, insisting that each submission had to be dealt with on a case-by-case basis and where automation is not possible.

“Decisions about these removals is made by people. We have many people working full time on the process, and ensuring enough resources are available for the processing of requests required a significant hiring effort.”

‘Still building out the serving technology’

Google’s notification to users of the fact that links have been removed from specific search results has also irked regulators.

Fleischer clarified that Google places an alert on all searches that involve a name of a person. The alert states that search results have been modified – suggesting users should use google.com rather than a local European domain like google.co.uk or google.fr if they want untampered with results.

“Most name queries are for famous people – people search disproportionately for celebrities and other public figures,” explained Fleischer. “We have made a pragmatic choice not to show this notice by default for known celebrities or public figures.”

“We are still building out the serving technology for the notification so the notice may sometimes not appear where it should, and vice versa,” he said.

‘Difficult to bring any real accountability’

“It is welcome that the letter was made public, though it still leaves many questions remaining about the reasons for or against deleting links, as well as the process,” said Julia Powles, a researcher in law and technology at the University of Cambridge. “Until we have fine-grained statistics and a sufficient range of deidentified cases to be able to assess empirically, it is difficult to bring any real accountability.”

“That the ECJ did not anticipate or build in any public accountability mechanism (beyond appeal to national authorities against a rejected decision) is one of the major flaws with the May ruling,” Powels explained.

“We are pleased Google has responded and look forward to discussing it with our colleagues at the Article 29 Working Party,” said David Smith, deputy commissioner and director of data protection for the Information commissioner’s office. “The key thing now is to move toward publishing guidelines in the autumn explaining the general approach data protection authorities, including the ICO, will adopt when handling complaints about name-based search results.”

“We are confident that the judgment can be implemented in a way that gives important rights to individuals whilst recognising the significance of public access to information via internet searches,” he said.

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