Reports claim that search giant Google received nearly 350,000 requests to remove 1.2 million links on its search results. Google claim that 42 percent of the links were already removed from search results.
The European Union Court of Justice released a ruling in May 2014 stating that search engines, like Google and Yahoo, may be forced to erase search results that link to people on the Internet. The ruling is part of the European Union's "Right to be forgotten" law.
The "Right to be forgotten" ruling allows an individual to apply to a search engine to remove links to online documents like court judgments and news articles that contains their individual name.
The ruling also gave search engines the right to assess each individual request with one guideline: the search engine can only continue to reveal the reported search results as long as there is public interest in doing so, according to Android Headlines.
Of the 1.2 million links requested to be removed, only 441,032 were removed from Google search results. Google decided not to remove 608,169 links, while the rest are waiting for review or require additional data.
The "Right to be forgotten" is exclusively exercised at countries that are member of the European Union and Argentina. The ruling, or any resemblance of it, does not exist anywhere else in the globe.
According to The Next Web, a consumer advocacy group based in the United States wrote to the Federal Trade Commission in July to have the agency launch an inquiry as to why Google has not extended the option in the country.