Europe's top court tells Google to 'forget'

The European Court of Justice in Luxembourg has backed the "right to be forgotten" and said Google must delete "inadequate, irrelevant or no longer relevant" data from its results when a member of the public requests it. The decision is a blow for Google, which has sought to avoid the obligation to remove links when requested by European users of its service.

"If, following a search made on the basis of a person's name, the list of results displays a link to a web page which contains information on the person in question, that data subject may approach the operator directly and, where the operator does not grant his request, bring the matter before the competent authorities in order to obtain, under certain conditions, the removal of that link from the list of results," the judges said in their ruling.

Al Verney, a spokesman for Google, said in a statement that the decision was "a disappointing ruling for search engines and online publishers in general," and that the company would "take time - to analyze the implications. Google was "very surprised" that the judgment - differs so dramatically" from a preliminary ruling by the court last year that mostly went in the company's favor, he said. The case is the first of many in the pipeline against Google in which Spanish citizens want the search engine to delete personal information about them from their search results. Google is also facing a number of investigations around the world related to privacy issues. The Mountain View, Calif.-based, firm was fined $1.38 million in Italy after its Street View program took photographs of people without their knowledge.

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