Google is a tech company that has presence almost everywhere. In Europe where it's having roughly 90 percent of the market, is targeted endlessly by European regulators and privacy watchdogs, who openly fear and distrust its dominance.
A landmark court ruling intended to rein in Google has instead put it at the forefront of Europe's enforcement of internet privacy. People have questioned whether the role of Google, or other commercial entities, have interest in protecting privacy.
They tend to have little to no transparency, and that is a big concern.
It has been almost two years since the European has gained the "right to be forgotten" on the internet. With it, Google has passed judgement in over 418,000 cases coming from people who want certain links to be removed from Google's Search results.
Europe has a complex data protection rules. And here, Google's total number of privacy-related judgement has doubled since then. People are complaining, but behind its closed doors, Google just approved fewer than half of those requested.
As a commercial entity, privacy experts have argued about how people's digital life could actually make billions of dollars to Google. And that is not all, Europe is also after Amazon and other U.S.-based tech giants. The intensifying scrutiny by European regulators could potentially affect their income in the region, and also how they operate around the world.
Still Having The "Legal" Power
Less than 1 percent of Google's decisions are appealing to Europe's privacy authorities, highlighting the authorities ruling in the company's favor. What the public wants, is transparency in both Google and the government. While Google has its doors closed, people can't see what's happening.
People are complaining about the company's lack of details over how its decisions were made. This has left them angry and frustrated because privacy is a delicate matter. These people couldn't complain more because the condition of anonymity - they didn't want to publicize their own privacy cases, especially when media companies are around.
"If governments were handling the 'right to be forgotten,' they would have to publish data," said Martin Husovec, a professor at the Tilburg Institute for Law, Technology, and Society in the Netherlands, and a signatory of the open letter to Google. "But with Google, we can't see what’s happening behind the company's closed doors."
After Europe's ruling asked search engines like Google and Microsoft's Bing as of July 2014, to remove links by people's requests, Europe is handing them the power to decide. Search engines can process the request they see legitimate and abide that don't.
Here is where the problem rises: the Europe's top court did not require the companies to make their decision-making process open to the public.
People's privacy requests must relate to online information, like personal circumstances or a past criminal conviction, that is no longer relevant or not in the public interest. Google and others have the power to see what's what, and process whichever they want.
Furthermore, the request procedure require people to submit an online form complete with their official ID.
The Process For Removal
While everything is kept secret from the public, and Google is not giving much comment about its review process, two of its executives did gave some details about how decisions were made.
Typically, requests to Google are sent to the company's legal team. Straightforward rulings, like those that involve a public figure who cannot legally apply for links to be removed, are handled by junior staff members. Tougher decisions are referred to senior lawyers who must include the individual's privacy against the public's right to information, the company officials said.
If Google accepts a request, it informs the individual that the privacy demand has been successful, while also notifying the website that links to certain European search results have been removed. The website cannot appeal the decision. If Google refuses the request, the company must tell the individual that the decision can be appealed, but does not specifically explain why the submission failed.
While this procedure did give a slight glance about how the "right to be forgotten" works behind Google's closed doors, some European officials remain wary about Google's power to make privacy decision. At one point, Google has dealt with more than 1.4 million link removal requests as of 2016 (1.2 million in 2015), and that is seen as straightforward. But the company is not transparent, and that is what matters to them.
