Google, Merrill Lynch And The Right To Be Forgotten

EU’s right to be forgotten: Guardian articles have been hidden by Google
►http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jul/02/eu-right-to-be-forgotten-guardian-google

You can still find a vanished Dougie McDonald page if you search “Scottish referee who lied”; it only disappears when you add his name to the search.

If you search any EU Google site for anything resembling a name, you’ll see a warning your results may be restricted. Yet, there’s an even better workaround which the search giant has left open. If you go to the Google homepage, and look in the bottom right-hand corner, you’ll see a link saying “Use Google.com”. Do that – or switch to another search engine, such as DuckDuckGo, which has no EU footprint and also doesn’t track cookies – and for now, you’ll see the full unfiltered results.

But this isn’t enough. The Guardian, like the rest of the media, regularly writes about things people have done which might not be illegal but raise serious political, moral or ethical questions – tax avoidance, for example. These should not be allowed to disappear: to do so is a huge, if indirect, challenge to press freedom. The ruling has created a stopwatch on free expression – our journalism can be found only until someone asks for it to be hidden.