Google taking requests for ‘right to be forgotten’ online in Europe

Google is starting to accept requests from Europeans who want to erase unflattering information from the results produced by the world’s dominant search engine.The demands can be submitted on a Web page that Google opened late Thursday in response to a landmark ruling issued two weeks ago by Europe’s highest court. The decision gives Europeans the means to polish their online reputations by petitioning Google and other search engines to remove potentially damaging links to newspaper articles and other websites with embarrassing information about their past activities. Google’s compliance thrusts the company into the prickly position of having to balance privacy concerns and “the right to be forgotten” against the principles of free expression and “the right to know.”