Google continues to be overwhelmed by "right to be forgotten" requests from its European users, revealing in its Transparency report Friday that the requests now add up to 144,907.
The requests are a result of a ruling by the European Union Court of Justice in May that allows Europeans to ask the search giant, along with other search engines, to remove links to search results that they believe are either irrelevant, invalid, or a threat to their privacy, according to CNET.
Google started accepting requests on May 29th, with the requests covering 497,507 different webpages. The company has so far removed 170,506 (41.8 percent of the total that have been processed) of close to 500,000 page links that have been asked to be taken down. 237,561 (58.2 percent of total processed) of them remain up and running.
Believing the court's ruling to be a violation of free speech, Google has been fighting to have the ruling overturned, going as far as to create an advisory council that has been holding public hearings throughout Europe about the requests, VentureBeat reported. The council is led by Chairman Eric Schmidt.
Among the requests that Google has granted was one from a woman in Italy who asked the company to take down an article about her husband's murder that has been around for a decade and included her name. One of the requests the company didn't grant was from a financial professional who asked for the removal of over 10 links to pages about his arrest and conviction for financial crimes.
The ruling affects all European countries, with France being responsible for 28,898 removal requests, 24,979 coming from Germany, the U.K. having 18,304, Spain having 13,316, and 11,379 coming from Italy, CNET reported.
Facebook was the most affected domain with 3,331 individual pages removed, with Profileengine.com coming in second with 3,287 pages removed. This website lets users search for people. Other websites that have received requests include social network Badoo.com and Google's YouTube and Google Groups.
Google wrote in a blog post that it believes it is doing the right thing by sharing information about the requests, VentureBeat reported.
"We believe it's important to be transparent about how much information we're removing from search results while being respectful of individuals who have made requests," the company wrote. "Releasing this information to the public helps hold us accountable for our process and implementation."
