France: Annoying the GOOG. Do the French Change a Cheese Process?

June 15, 2015

I have do chien in this fight. I read “France Orders Google to Scrub Search Globally in Right to Be Forgotten Requests.” Since I had been in a far off land then beavering away in a place where open carry enhances one’s machismo, the story may be old news to you. To me, it was like IBM innovation: Looked fresh, probably recycled.

Nevertheless, the article reports that the folks who bedeviled Julius Caesar are now irritating the digital Roman Empire. I learned:

France’s Commission nationale de l’informatique et des libertés (CNIL), the country’s data protection authority, has ordered Google to apply delisting on all domain names of its search engine. CNIL said in its news release that it’s received hundreds of complaints following Google’s refusals to carry out delisting. According to its latest transparency report, last updated on Friday 12 June, Google had received a total of 269,314 removal requests, had evaluated 977,948 URLs, and had removed 41.3% of those URLs.

I had an over the transom email from a person who identified himself with two initials only. He wrote:

For some reason the person was unhappy with Google’s responsiveness. I pointed the person to the appropriate Google Web page. But the two initial person continues to ask me to help. Yo, dude, I am retired. Google does not perceive me as much more than a person who should be buying Adwords.

Apparently, folks like my two letter person feels similarly frustrated.

As I understand the issue, France, like some other countries, wants the Google to remove links to content a person or entity filling in the form to move quickly and with extreme prejudice.

We will see. The Google does not do sprints, even when the instructions come from a country with more than 200 varieties of cheese, a plethora of search and retrieval systems, and some unsullied landscapes.

My hunch is that it may be quicker to create a Le Châtelain Camembert than to modify Google’s internal work flows. Well, maybe Roquefort or a Tomme de Savoie. Should France stick with cheese and leave the Googling to Google?

Stephen E Arnold, June 15, 2015

Written by Stephen E. Arnold · Filed Under Google, Indexing, News

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Stephen E. Arnold monitors search, content processing, text mining and related topics from his high-tech nerve center in rural Kentucky. He tries to winnow the goose feathers from the giblets. He works with colleagues worldwide to make this Web log useful to those who want to go "beyond search". Contact him at sa [at] arnoldit.com. His Web site with additional information about search is arnoldit.com.