Europe’s “Right To Be Forgotten” Creates A Business Niche

To help customers invoke their newly acquired “right to be forgotten,” reputation management firms are springing up in Europe to serve both business and individual clients. The European Court of Justice in May ruled that parties had a right to require search engines to delete links to information that violated their privacy rights, but standards and procedures are unclear and until June information about the status of requests made to Google, the party that overwhelmingly dominates search in Europe, had been sparse. Now the manager of one British reputation management company says that Google denies most requests, often on the grounds the information is in the public interest, but that from Google’s denials the company is learning what kinds of requests will succeed.