Google and Internet Law - Essay Example

 The person who wants to wipe his name from the Internet has to send an official request explaining the reason for such a decision. It is capturing that the company has already received more than 41.000 requests and even hired a department of specialists responsible for removal.

The title of the innovative policy explains its cause quite clearly - a person has a private right to be anonymous which prevails public right to information. The protesters of this step, however, claim that it puts Google into a very difficult position of a censor allowing its employees to decide which information has to be shown and which has to be hidden.  Thus, European society had to face a now new stage of information privacy in the Internet development and deal with it before other continents. But the tendency spreads really fast - Yahoo and Bing have already claimed that they would follow Google`s example. Moreover, there was a request to make this policy global not to concentrate on Europe solely. Japan and Canada will probably join Europe soon.

This innovation will certainly do much good to the numerous users who had their names posted in irrelevant blog posts, social networks, and awkward advertisements. The first case of removal can serve as a perfect example of what “the right to be forgotten” actually means. Mario Gonzalez, the Italian entrepreneur, requested to delete the advertisement of his long-resolved debt from the search engine data. Obviously, nobody wants his friends, partners, or possible employers to see such irrelevant and outdated information on the Internet since it can only cause harm to the reputation. 

  Most of us, people posting something on the Internet daily, often forget that our name can appear out of nowhere in a Google search and show some negative or dubious aspect of our lives. It is much like the photos in which we look bad or funny, that we often hide. This information is personal, and the viewers can create wrong assumptions regarding our real personalities.  The human brain eradicates unnecessary memories or at least puts them in distant places in our minds. The Internet, however, works in a different way: the information does not disappear until someone makes it vanish.  Thus, it is people who control information and its usage, and Google turns out to be an almighty and all-knowing machine.             

Therefore, it is extremely important to return this power of personal information possession and usage to those who had created it - its owners. As for me, this is just a modern variation of personal property law. Nobody has the right to break into your house and sort through your documents. And subsequently, nobody has the right to read outdated information about you on the Internet. The only disputable thing in this question is that Google managers plan to make this service chargeable, which instantly makes it less accessible.