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Comment by ars | Hacker News Reader

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 wants the full scoop about someone will just use the US google site, making this a completely pointless exercise.

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> 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.

> 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.

>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.

Given the disaster this is likely to inflict on search results if scaled up, and the fact that it's not required in America, do you really think they'll make the whole global search engine work this way? Or do you think they'll do the same thing as done in every other case where some stupid country requires censorship: block based on domain name or IP address?

Historically, for Europe it's been done via domain name. Doing it via IP address would not be any more effective though: there'd immediately be dozens of proxy sites set up running in the US that simply forward the search to the US Google and return the results.

Short of building an equivalent to the Chinese Great Firewall and blocking all encrypted traffic, or forcing Google to apply European cenorship globally, there's no way to stop Europeans who want regular results pages from getting them.

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