Google has received 282,580 right to be forgotten requests and the search engine has evaluated 1,027,495 URLs for removal, the company said in its transparency report. The European Union passed the right to be forgotten laws in May 2014 which allows people have web pages containing false, misleading, or outdated information about them removed from web searches. The transparency report showed that Google removed 41.3% of the URLs it evaluated from its searches, which translates to around 359,803 URLs. Google also showed the top ten domains they've removed the most URLs from search results. Note these top ten results represents only 8% of the URLs removed. The high rate of approvals for the right to be forgotten requests has raised some concerns in Europe that criminals and former felons might abuse the laws designed to protect privacy. However, Google says that it evaluates each request on a case-by-case basis and says that it will not remove information pertaining to public interest. From their FAQ section: In evaluating a request, we will look at whether the results include outdated or inaccurate information about the person. We’ll also weigh whether or not there’s a public interest in the information remaining in our search results—for example, if it relates to financial scams, professional malpractice, criminal convictions or your public conduct as a government official (elected or unelected). Our removals team has to look at each page individually and base decisions on the limited context provided by the requestor and the information on the webpage. Is…
