It has been dubbed the ‘right to be forgotten’.<br /><br />In a case pitting privacy campaigners against Google, a top EU court says Internet firms can be made to remove irrelevant or excessive personal data from search engine results.<br /><br />The European Court of Justice upheld a complaint by a Spanish man that Google searches on his name threw up links to a newspaper article in 1998 about his home being repossessed.<br /><br />Google says it is disappointed at the landmark ruling from the Luxembourg-based court.<br /><br />But it has been welcomed in Brussels, where back in 2012 the European Commission proposed a law giving people the ‘right to be forgotten’ on the Internet.<br /><br />“It is good news because it confirms the position of the European Commission,” said EC spokeswoman Mina Andreeva.<br /><br />She said the court’s decision shows “that European law can apply to a search engine and that Google is a controller of data, can be regarded as a controller.<br /><br />“It is above all not good only for the Commission but for citizens who will see their data are better protected,” she added.<br /><br />Not only does this case highlight the struggle in cyberspace between free speech advocates and supporters of privacy rights.<br /><br />It also creates both technical challenges and potential extra costs for companies like Google.
