Google Inc. share price up, implementation of the “right to be forgotten” raises questions and confusion

The decision of Google Inc. to remove part of the search results for a 7-year-old article of British Broadcasting Corp. about the ex-Chief Executive Officer of Merrill Lynch & Co. – Mr. Stan ONeal- has been criticized by the U.K. company. The criticism has also raised questions related to the new “right to be forgotten” rules that were imposed by the European Union to the search engine company several weeks ago.

British Broadcasting Corp. commented Googles decision to remove results related to its “Merrills Mess” blog post in an e-mailed statement to Bloomberg: “We’re surprised that this is the outcome of the ECJ ruling and concerned at the implications of the removal from search of this type of material.”

The search engine company warned the Economics Editor of the U.K.-based company Mr. Robert Peston that it intends to reduce the number of search results linking to his article under the European Court of Justices ruling that allows the removal of certain “inadequate, irrelevant, no longer relevant, or excessive” information. At first it was not completely clear how Google Inc.s decision interpreted the new privacy rules and it is still not clear who asked for the removal.

Google Inc. also made a statement, which was cited by Bloomberg: “We’ve recently started taking action on the removals request. It’s a new and evolving process for us and we’ll continue to listen to feedback and we’ll also work with data protection authorities and others as we comply with the ruling.”

The U.S.-based company started to implement the new rules imposed by the European Court of Justice this week, which led to confusion. Google Inc. was reported to have received more than 70 000 removal requests for about a month. The company revealed that it continues to get about 1 000 removal requests on a daily basis. Most of the requests have come from France – about 14 000, followed by Germany with 12 000, while 8 500 were sent from the U.K.

Google Inc. rose by 0.41% on Thursday to close the session at 584.73 dollars per share. The company is valued at $397.21 billion. According to CNN Money, the 40 analysts offering 12-month price forecasts for Google Inc have a median target of $662.50, with a high estimate of $750.00 and a low estimate of $525.00. The median estimate represents a +13.30% increase from the last price of $584.73.