Google vague at right-to-be-forgotten roadshow

Google Inc. promised a "robust" debate on a European Union court ruling that forces it to cut some search links with the first of a series of hearings across Europe. Its advisers took just three questions from the public.

The world's largest search provider opened a seven-city roadshow in Madrid recently to gather views on the May court judgment it opposes. Google's critics say the meetings are a self-serving attempt to steer a debate on the so-called right to be forgotten.

"Whatever Google would have done would have been considered PR," said Luciano Floridi, a professor of philosophy at Oxford University who is part of the Google panel. "It doesn't take anything away from the process," he said.

The privacy ruling is another EU regulatory hurdle for Google, which has battled against a lengthy antitrust probe over its search results and criticism over its taxation. The bloc's competition chief said over the weekend that he would demand more concessions from Google, derailing a settlement originally planned to be finalized this month.

Google was ordered by judges at the European Court of Justice to delete links on request to "inadequate, irrelevant, no longer relevant, or excessive" content that pops up on a search of a person's name. The company faced criticism from all sides for its response, including telling newspapers that it was pulling links to articles.

'Wonderful Things'

Google's panel of advisers on the privacy ruling, which includes Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales and a former German justice minister, heard from a Spanish magistrate, a historian and a journalist during a more than four-hour public session yesterday. The panel aims to draft recommendations for how the right to be forgotten should work and how Google should enforce it.

While Google does wonderful things, "they are not willing to embrace true dialogue," said Aurelie Pols, a co-founder of consultancy Mind Your Privacy who attended the Madrid hearing.

Google Chairman Eric Schmidt said the company needs to balance the right to information with privacy rights when it handles requests to remove links. Google has received 120,000 requests to cut links, affecting 457,000 Internet addresses as of Sept. 1, Al Verney, a company spokesman, told reporters.

"Google needs credibility to make these hard decisions about what the public should no longer have a right to find so easily," said Joris van Hoboken, a researcher at New York University. "Google may have a lack of that, so perhaps this tour is meant to help them gain in that respect."

'Quite Superficial'

The testimony from the invited experts were "quite superficial," said Jef Ausloos, a researcher at Belgium's University of Leuven.

"We really hoped that these hearings would take a more practical angle, looking at how Google should make the balance in practice," he said in an email. "The Court of Justice already decided that search engines have to do this. What we need to know now, is how exactly this should happen, what the role is for national data protection authorities."

Of the three written questions from members of the audience that were chosen, none were directed at the two Google executives on the panel, Schmidt and the company's top lawyer David Drummond.

The pair are at the center of Google's four-year struggle to overcome accusations of unfairly treating search rivals.

Schmidt declined to comment "at this point" about a Bloomberg TV interview with EU Competition Commissioner Joaquin Almunia where he said he wanted Google to offer more to rescue a proposed antitrust settlement.

The bloc's privacy regulators are debating guidelines for how to handle any complaints over Google's handling of requests to delete links. EU governments and lawmakers must still agree new data-protection rules that also defines the right to be forgotten.