Google has launched a new Website that gives European users the opportunity to demand the deletion of personal information and related links from its search engine. To comply with new "right to be forgotten" requirements in the EU, the Web giant now offers an online form to facilitate those requests.

Earlier this month, the European Union Court of Justice ruled that Website operators must remove links to obsolete or irrelevant personal information, or data that otherwise infringes on their personal privacy, upon request by European citizens.

The demand follows a court case, Google v. Gonzalez, was filed by a resident of Spain, against Google and a newspaper publisher in Spain for their refusal to remove links to a 1998 announcement in the newspaper about personal debts and the forced sale of his home. The Spanish Data Protection Agency did not require the newspaper to take down the pages but did order Google to remove the data from its search results. Google appealed to the National High Court of Spain, which sought advice from the European Union Court of Justice for a preliminary judgment.

With the ruling against Google, one that will affect all search engines and social media sites, the court ruled that European citizens have a “right to be forgotten” when links to Web pages published by third parties include personal data that is not only false or unlawful—the current stance of many EU member states—but also where it appears to be “inadequate, no longer relevant, or excessive in relation to the purposes for which they were processed and in the light of the time that has elapsed.”  An exemption is allowed for information deemed to be in the public interest.

“In implementing this decision, we will assess each individual request and attempt to balance the privacy rights of the individual with the public's right to know and distribute information,” Google wrote on the new Website, which went live on Friday morning. “When evaluating your request, we will look at whether the results include outdated information about you, as well as whether there's a public interest in the information—for example, information about financial scams, professional malpractice, criminal convictions, or public conduct of government officials.”

Petitioners are asked to: provide the URL for each link appearing in a Google search they want removed; explain, if not clear, why the linked page is about them, or if they are submitting the form on behalf of someone else; and explain how the  search results are irrelevant, outdated, or otherwise inappropriate. To protect against fraudulent removal requests “from people impersonating others, trying to harm competitors, or improperly seeking to suppress legal information,” Google will verify identities and ask for a copy of a valid driver's license, national ID card, or other photo identification.

The ruling could have far-reaching effects that go beyond the EU borders. Privacy experts say that no matter where the physical server of a company processing data is located, non-European companies when offering services to European consumers must apply European rules. Another unresolved question is how companies that host search engines on their Websites will be affected by the decision.

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