Google Introduces Geo-Blocking to Further Protect Europeans’ Privacy

In response to France’s push for stricter search engine result compliance to their “right to be forgotten” privacy laws, Google has institute geo-blocking for an entire country’s access to blocked data. What does this mean? It means that across the spectrum of Google search engines (Google.ie, in Ireland for instance, and Google.com), information that falls under European privacy laws will not show up in Google search results. Prior to this change, receiving “deleted” content was only restricted to national search Google search engines.

This is quite controversial. A recent op-ed by Daphne Keller, of the Stanford Center for Internet and Society and a former associate general counsel for Google, and Bruce D. Brown, of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, hits upon some of these obstacles here.