This week the European Court of Justice made a nonappealable ruling that gives its citizens the right to redact any information on searches of their names republished by Google they deem to be wrong, out-of-date and, it appears, unflattering.  And, the presumption is that it also extends to politicians, corporations, and governments. This ruling applies to all search engines and will radically change search as we know it in Europe.

Privacy advocates herald the decision as a way for individuals to protect themselves from the big bad Googles of the world. While the search engines are still trying to determine what impact this will have.

A move like this is difficult to for Americans to understand. We tend to take the view that more information is better and that the truth prevails because of the vast amount of information. We abhor the idea of censorship or anything that stops our first amendment right to free speech. We feel so strongly about it that we are willing to put up with misinformation to protect that right. This is not the case in Europe where propaganda and wrong information have so often historically prevailed giving them a more skeptical view of information. Europeans take the view that information is power and that those less powerful deserve some protection from it. Apparently the European Court of Justice has just provided some protection from information to the little guy.

This ruling does beg the question, “Does Google have the right to publish whatever it wants without regard to the truth? Mainstream media are held to account on the accuracy of what they print. They can be and are often sued for liable. Yet, Google and other search engines can republish erroneous stories without fear of retribution.

Is this yet another attack on the open and free Internet by a government that resents the power companies like Google have amassed in a short period of time? It’s hard to say.

Time will tell how the search engines respond and what impact this will have on search engine optimization.