Two noteworthy examples from the Spain case back in 2011 include a plastic surgeon who was sued for 5 million euro after supposedly botching a client’s breast augmentation and a high school principal who got a ticket for urinating in public. The two successfully convinced Spain’s Data Protection Agency to force Google to remove unflattering links to the incidents from its search engine results. At the time, another 88 people had fought and won the right to have various links about themselves removed as well.
Google can be bad for business, in other words, and one of the larger issues to this story is where to draw the line over what can be removed. Lobbying to have links to things you’ve posted about yourself is one thing; having search engine links to information someone else has posted about you deleted is another, more complicated issue entirely.
By April 2011, Google had already appealed the decision of Spain’s national court five times, arguing that — for better or worse — Google’s role is to index the world’s information. The search giant argued then, and still does today, that if people want inflammatory links about themselves removed from Google, their best course should be to take the issue up directly with whomever posted the content in the first place.