It Turns Out That Lots of People Don’t Like What Google Says About Them

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Today we learn the consequences of the recent European court ruling that people can petition Google to remove search results they don’t happen to like:

Google Inc. said Tuesday that it had received 41,000 requests from people hoping to delete individual results that turn up for their name in the first four days after it posted a Web page to take the requests late last week….The figure suggests that while a wave of people looking to exercise their new right has crested since Friday, the flood is continuing. The number of requests works out to more than 10,000 a day through the end of day Monday, or roughly 7 a minute, compared with 20 requests a minute in the initial hours after Google posted the web form.

I wonder if this will prompt the morons at the European Court of Justice to reconsider their ruling? Probably not, I suppose.

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Managing an independent, nonprofit newsroom is staggeringly hard. There’s no cushion in our budget—no backup revenue, no corporate safety net. We can’t afford to fall short, and we can’t rely on corporations or deep-pocketed interests to fund the fierce, investigative journalism Mother Jones exists to do. That’s why we need you right now. Please chip in to help close the gap.

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