France’s data protection regulator CNIL has just fined Google €100,000 ($112,000) after rejecting the firm’s proposed compromise over the “right to be forgotten” legislation.
The legislation gives any individual the right to have outdated or irrelevant information about them removed from search results. The search giant at first offered to remove the results from local domains on a country-by-country basis, in this case google.fr, before then saying it would remove them from google.com when a search was carried out inside France.
France however believed that was not sufficient and threatened to fine Google if the results were not removed globally. As many people hoped, the company refused to do so, and the Wall Street Journal now reports that the CNIL has indeed levied the fine.
A spokesman for Google said they would appeal the ruling, adding that “we disagree with the CNIL’s assertion that it has the authority to control the content that people can access outside France”.
The fine is of course trivial to the US company, so it will be rather interesting to see whether the action ends, or as is more likely, France attempts to levy more fines when they refuse to comply with the ruling.
SOURCE: 9to5Google.com.
Larry Banks is a keen follower of technology and finance. He has worked for a variety of online publications, writing about a diverse range of topics including mobile networks, patents, and Internet video delivery technologies.