Larry Page On Right To Be Forgotten: “Could Have Arrived At More Practical Place Than Court Ruling”

Larry Page offered his thoughts on the European court’s “Right To Be Forgotten” ruling during an interview at Google’s I/O conference this week with New York Times reporter Farhad Manjoo.

Page claimed it would have been better if there had been more discussion around the matter. “We could have arrived at a more practical place than a court ruling,” said Page.

He went on to add that Google is complying with the ruling, and will begin removing links quickly, even though he pointed out that he didn’t believe the court’s decision was practical.

“If you’re an aggrieved user, you have to get your information removed from many sites that have that data. That doesn’t seem very practical,” said Page.

Last month, the EU ruled individuals had the right to request links be removed from European search results of major search engines. According to Page, the heart of the matter centers on how a person is represented online when people search for the person.

“To date, we’ve said we’ll try our best to represent the things that are out there on the Internet about you,” Page told Manjoo. Page said he believed, as a search engine, it was Google’s job to represent “what’s in the world.”