What is Google’s approach to the right to be forgotten?

RTBF is a useful tool with significant limitations that are often misunderstood. It is a delisting remedy, not a deletion remedy: a successful request causes Google to stop returning the URL in EU/UK Google search for the specific person’s name, but the underlying article continues to exist and is still accessible directly, still indexed by other search engines, and still indexed by Google for searches that are not the person’s name. The criteria are specific: the content must be inaccurate, inadequate, irrelevant, or excessive relative to the purposes of processing, and Google weighs that against the public interest in the information. Public figures, journalists writing about matters of public concern, and recent matters all face high hurdles. We file RTBF requests where the criteria genuinely fit and the remedy makes sense within a broader program; we do not treat it as a default response. In US-only situations, RTBF is not available.