Here is a name compliance officers might come to loathe in 2015: Mario Costeja González. It was on his behalf that the European Court of Justice ruled last May that Google and other Internet search engines had to remove links to derogatory historical information about people if they request it—so long as the damage to the individual outweighs any public interest in linking to the information.
Already the ruling in this case appears to be having unexpected reach. European data protection authorities released guidelines in December that make the Costeja ruling a global issue, says Chris Babel, CEO of TRUSTe, a software firm that helps companies manage online privacy. Google has been removing references to specific people only on its country-specific URLs, like those ending in “.de” for Germany or “.es” for Spain. The new guidelines, however, say the right to be forgotten should apply across all domains, including “.com,” he says.
