Google Just Lost One of Its Hardest ‘Right to Be Forgotten’ Cases Yet

A once “negligent” doctor just won a landmark case against the search giant

How long should a mistake follow you? On the internet, where an embarrassing old profile pic is always just a Google search away, the answer can feel like “forever.”

This isn’t quite the case in the European Union, where citizens have the “right to be forgotten,” a component of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) that was established in 2014. It gives people the ability to request the removal of URLs containing “inadequate, irrelevant or no longer relevant” information from search engines.

In theory, it’s aimed at private citizens whose lives have been negatively affected by the dissemination of personal information (revenge porn survivors, for instance) or at those who have been subject to the spread of falsehoods. In practice, it’s unclear whether that’s the case: The definition of “inadequate, irrelevant or no longer relevant” information can feel ambiguous — and so can the criteria Google applies to grant or deny a specific request, at least until it’s legally compelled to change course.

What is clear, however, is that the right to be forgotten isn’t just for private citizens embarrassed by an old Flickr photo or…