What does the Google ruling mean?

What’s happened?

The case dates back to 2009 when Mario Costeja, a lawyer in Spain, objected that entering his name in Google’s search engine led to legal notices dating back to 1998 in an online version of a Spanish newspaper that detailed his accumulated debts and the forced sale of his property. Mr Costeja said the debt issues had been resolved and were no longer relevant.

When the newspaper that had published the information, La Vanguardia, refused to remove the notices, and when Google refused to expunge the links, he complained to the Spanish Data Protection Agency that his rights to the protection of his personal data were being violated. The Spanish authority ordered Google to remove the links in July 2010, but it did not impose any order on the newspaper.

Google challenged the order, and the National High Court of Spain referred the case to the European court for advice on how to rule.

What did the court say?

Ultimately, the court ruled that you now have the right to control your own private data when it comes to search engines. That’s particularly pertinent if you’re not a public figure.

The ruling stated: “The operator of a search engine is obliged to remove from the list of results displayed following a search made on the basis of a person’s name links to web pages, published by third parties and containing information relating to that person, also in a case where that name or information is not erased beforehand or simultaneously from those web pages, and even, as the case may be, when its publication in itself on those pages is lawful.”

So if the information is outdated or irrelevant, you could get the search engine’s link removed, whether it’s on Google, Bing, Yahoo or elsewhere.

But what does it mean?

It's being considered a major step forward for privacy. It means you now have the right to be forgotten, if you so wish. That right to be forgotten is based on the premise that outdated information about people should be removed from the internet after a certain time, and a law that would establish that right is still under debate in European Parliament.

That stemmed from a proposal in 2012 that people should have the "right to be forgotten" on the internet, subsequently watered down by the European Parliament last year in favour of a "right to erasure" of specific information. However, it needs the backing of the 28 European Union governments before it can become law.

Say you come across a horrible picture of yourself online. You can now ask Google to remove a link from its search results to that image. Or how about a court ruling that you’d rather didn’t keep popping up every time your name was searched? It doesn’t matter if the information was legally published; if it’s a legitimate request, the EU ruling means the search engine has to remove the link.

If the search engine challenges the request, for example in the case of a public figure, the case can then be referred to data protection authorities or the courts system for resolution.

What the ruling won't do, however, is remove the information from the web permanently. The ruling only forces Google to remove the link to the information, which means the data itself is still out there online. It could pop up on Facebook or Twitter from time to time.

Obviously, removing it from search engines means it is less visible to the average web user, but the popularity of social media may dilute the impact of this somewhat.

Are there any downsides to this?

The main criticism of this ruling centres around censorship and freedom of information. While no one wants the indiscretions of their younger days to come back to haunt them in their later years, or have one incident haunt them for the rest of their lives, the potential for this to be abused is concerning.

How would you feel, for example, if you searched for a prospective employee online only to find out later on that all references to past criminal behaviour had been removed at their request? That’s what critics are afraid will happen.

However, experts believe that this ruling may benefit ordinary people more than public figures, which means politicians and others deemed as public interest may not be able to take quite as much advantage of it as feared.

What does it mean for search engines?

It will be a bit of a headache, with both technical challenges and likely extra costs to deal with. Google said it was disappointed with the ruling, but data protection authorities are more upbeat about the ruling, seeing it as a toughening of privacy rules and data protection reform.

(Additional reporting: agencies)