Google's executive chairman says European court of justice ruling went too far in favour of privacy at cost of right to know

A European judgment concerning personal privacy and the right to be forgotten is flawed, according to Google’s Eric Schmidt.

The executive chairman told investors at Google’s annual shareholder meeting on Wednesday that there were “many open questions” over the ruling by European Court of Justice (ECJ) that there is a “right to be forgotten”, which has serious implications for Google as it is not a media company, and so is not protected under European data protection law,.

“A simple way of understanding what happened here is that you have a collision between a right to be forgotten and a right to know. From Google’s perspective that’s a balance,” said Schmidt. “Google believes, having looked at the decision which is binding, that the balance that was struck was wrong.”

'Disappointing'

Google’s chief legal officer, David Drummond, told investors that Google was still analysing the decision and the implications for the search engine, but described it as “disappointing” and that it “went too far”.

Google has a dominant search market share in Europe claiming 93% of search ahead of Microsoft’s Bing with 2.4% and Yahoo with 1.7%, according to data from StatCounter.

The ECJ ruling will force Google to remove links to content about individuals if it receives an application from said individuals to have information about them erased from Google’s index. Google will then have to weigh up whether that information is in the public interest and whether it should remain, likely placing a significant staffing burden on the company.

The ruling has been called a “blow against free speech” in the US, but opinions in Europe are more balanced.

• Explaining the ‘right to be forgotten’ – what does it actually mean and can anyone remove their data from the internet?