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Google bows to EU privacy ruling

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Re: Google bows to EU privacy ruling

#31

Post by peterwiese »

bowlofpetunias wrote: post #29
llii wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> where they do not have control over information about themselves on the internet The biggest gripe for me about this thing is that removing a link from google doesn't remove it from the website itself. But people think they're safe once the can't find it via Google because Google is all they know. Especially in the age of removing URLs from the browsers input field and all.

Hey, here's a surprise: the law also applies to the website itself. Just because the person who brought the suit targeted Google first (which is not strange, given that Google collects and re-publishes that information in a way that makes it immeasurably more accessible and "public" than the original publication) doesn't make the everybody else exempt. The only valid debate her is if Google significantly adds to the…

Thank you for bringing reason in here.

Re: Google bows to EU privacy ruling

#32

Post by Tomdarkness »

dang wrote: post #7
jve wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you search Google and copy a link from results page, thats what you get. Links are going through google.com and redirected to the site. This is probably what author did. :/

It's a clever trick. Unfortunately, it breaks the referential integrity of the post. I don't think we can allow it as the submission url, for the same reason we don't allow link shorteners. People who are already posting links to Google searches in comments, though, might want to post these instead. For those reading this later, the submitted url was http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd...

The only problem is now when you click on the submission link you can't view the article because you need a FT subscription. If you clicked the link that sends you via Google you can view the article due to the FT allowing limited free views via search engines.

Re: Google bows to EU privacy ruling

#33

Post by MzHN »

ars wrote: post #24
blazespin wrote: post #15

Oh those poor search engines, making billions of dollars having to have the decency to let private individuals not have to have their lives opened up to casual searches on the internet 24/7. What a tragedy! I for one have NO DESIRE for my children to grow up in a world where they do not have control over information about themselves on the internet. I can only pray this sensible law makes it to North America. For tho…

People aren't complaining about the idea of removing private information. They are complaining that you are just removing it from google . The info is still there! And not only that, it's only removed from google.co.{eu*} google.com will still have it. Which makes it as stupid of a law as the one about cookies: Make it look like you are helping privacy while actually doing nothing of any value. Anyone from the EU who…

>it's only removed from google.co.{eu*} google.com will still have it

Where is this information from? Sounds a bit strange, but I guess it could be true. It's not the first time big companies say "f u" to these rulings.

Re: Google bows to EU privacy ruling

#34

Post by oneeyedpigeon »

Tomdarkness wrote: post #32
dang wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a clever trick. Unfortunately, it breaks the referential integrity of the post. I don't think we can allow it as the submission url, for the same reason we don't allow link shorteners. People who are already posting links to Google searches in comments, though, might want to post these instead. For those reading this later, the submitted url was http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd...

The only problem is now when you click on the submission link you can't view the article because you need a FT subscription. If you clicked the link that sends you via Google you can view the article due to the FT allowing limited free views via search engines.

Maybe, in cases where the initial URL submitted redirects, the title should show two domains: the initial domain, and the final domain reached when the entire redirect chain is followed. Or we could try to convince the HN community to favour other sources over FT; this story, in particular, isn't short of write-ups elsewhere.

EDIT: BTW, I can view the article. Is that because I'm coming from outside the US?

Re: Google bows to EU privacy ruling

#35

Post by cbr »

microtonal wrote: post #11
arrrg wrote: post #2

I don't know why, but this creeps me out. This seems like such a hard balance to get right and also too much of a burden for search engines. Also, there is potential for abuse.

Sure, it is a hard balance to get right. But privacy is an important right and we should not throw it away because it creates some extra effort for a multi-billion dollar company. I also find it weak that Page plays the 'think of the startups' card. In fact, I think that since the Snowden leaks, there are far more opportunities to create privacy-aware or privacy-protecting services. E.g., I am pretty sure that Duckdu…

DuckDuckGo certainly has benefited from privacy becoming more salient, but this ruling is probably negative for them. Each of these removal requests needs manual review to keep people from requesting takedowns of other people's stuff. There are ~500M people eligible to request takedowns under the ruling, and if 1% of them ask for one link removed per year that's 14k requests per day. If each request takes 5min then you need 143 people working full time. Which high but doable for Google, but at ~20 employees this would be an enormous burden for DDG.

These numbers could be higher if someone puts out a campaign that goes viral and gets lots of people submitting requests, and there's nothing that stops people outside the EU from submitting (invalid) requests.

One thing in DDG's favor, however, is that that at first people are probably only going to send these requests to Google.

Disclaimer: I work for Google, on open source software.

Re: Google bows to EU privacy ruling

#36

Post by throwaway7767 »

ars wrote: post #24
blazespin wrote: post #15

Oh those poor search engines, making billions of dollars having to have the decency to let private individuals not have to have their lives opened up to casual searches on the internet 24/7. What a tragedy! I for one have NO DESIRE for my children to grow up in a world where they do not have control over information about themselves on the internet. I can only pray this sensible law makes it to North America. For tho…

People aren't complaining about the idea of removing private information. They are complaining that you are just removing it from google . The info is still there! And not only that, it's only removed from google.co.{eu*} google.com will still have it. Which makes it as stupid of a law as the one about cookies: Make it look like you are helping privacy while actually doing nothing of any value. Anyone from the EU who…

> And not only that, it's only removed from google.co.{eu*} google.com will still have it

Do you have a reference that confirms this? I have not seen it mentioned in any of the articles about this issue.

Re: Google bows to EU privacy ruling

#37

Post by k-mcgrady »

I actually have what I think is a valid reason to use this.

Years ago I created a friendfeed account. I used their Twitter signup button. Now years later I would like to close my friendfeed account to remove that information from the internet. There's nothing particularly bad about it but it's old, useless and I would rather it was deleted. The problem is I can't login into my account as I authorised through Twitter and I've since deleted my Twitter account. I also can't get in touch with anyone at friendfeed since they've shutdown but left their site up.

This ruling gives me a way to hide that friendfeed page from people. Unfortunately it will still be up but it's unlikely anyone will find it 'accidentally' if it isn't on Google.

Re: Google bows to EU privacy ruling

#38

Post by camus2 »

k-mcgrady wrote: post #37

I actually have what I think is a valid reason to use this. Years ago I created a friendfeed account. I used their Twitter signup button. Now years later I would like to close my friendfeed account to remove that information from the internet. There's nothing particularly bad about it but it's old, useless and I would rather it was deleted. The problem is I can't login into my account as I authorised through Twitter…

The ruling can be use for good and bad reasons.But I think it's important people can at least reach google in some special case,where a result from 10 year ago can be detrimental.

Re: Google bows to EU privacy ruling

#39

Post by krbbltr »

ars wrote: post #24
blazespin wrote: post #15

Oh those poor search engines, making billions of dollars having to have the decency to let private individuals not have to have their lives opened up to casual searches on the internet 24/7. What a tragedy! I for one have NO DESIRE for my children to grow up in a world where they do not have control over information about themselves on the internet. I can only pray this sensible law makes it to North America. For tho…

People aren't complaining about the idea of removing private information. They are complaining that you are just removing it from google . The info is still there! And not only that, it's only removed from google.co.{eu*} google.com will still have it. Which makes it as stupid of a law as the one about cookies: Make it look like you are helping privacy while actually doing nothing of any value. Anyone from the EU who…

> They are complaining that you are just removing it from google. The info is still there!

Which, as far as I can tell, is the point of the ruling.

The idea is to not have one particular thing that the world found interesting or newsworthy at some point in the past cast a shadow over an individual's life, so to speak. Yes, if you're really interested in someone's dirt, all the info is still there for you to dig up. Again, that's the idea.

Your point about google.com being unfiltered is, if true, somewhat valid. But the inability to enforce a good thing globally does not excuse not making an effort locally.

By the way, most countries in the EU do not use a `.co` domain for commercial entities.

Re: Google bows to EU privacy ruling

#40

Post by higherpurpose »

k-mcgrady wrote: post #37

I actually have what I think is a valid reason to use this. Years ago I created a friendfeed account. I used their Twitter signup button. Now years later I would like to close my friendfeed account to remove that information from the internet. There's nothing particularly bad about it but it's old, useless and I would rather it was deleted. The problem is I can't login into my account as I authorised through Twitter…

I also agree that for reasons such as this (deleting an unwanted account) the ruling is useful. The real problem is demanding Google or other services like theirs to delete data that appears from other services, that Google has nothing to do with, other than indexing them. Of course you'd have to believe that once the data is gone from the parent host, it disappears from Google's cache, too, automatically.

But just asking Google to get rid of it doesn't make a lot of sense to me, and I think it unnecessarily punishes them, too. Think about the tens of millions of such requests they'd have to respond to every year in the future.

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