Google has complied with a May ruling by the Court of Justice of the European Union, finally enabling EU folks the right to be forgotten online.
More precisely, Google will remove some search results on any EU citizen's request if those results are "inadequate, irrelevant or no longer relevant" or "excessive in relation to the purposes for which they were processed," the search giant said on Friday.
Users can visit Google's online form and enter a list of URLs they want to see removed, along with an explanation stating why. To prove their identity, users will have to submit some sort of ID, as well as their full name and an email address.
Google will then "assess each individual request and attempt to balance the privacy rights of the individual with the public’s right to know and distribute information," the company says on the form.
So how useful is all this, really? Well, not very -- as Mashable's Lance Ulanoff points out, the Internet never forgets. It's nearly impossible to remove some pieces of information from the net.
The form works only for EU citizens, and The Next Web reports Google will only remove the links from EU versions of its search engines -- but not Google.com -- making the entire process useless for most practical purposes.
Google, clearly, was not too happy with the situation.
In an interview with the Financial Times, Google CEO Larry Page said the court's ruling could stifle innovation.
“We’re a big company and we can respond to these kind of concerns and spend money on them and deal with them, it’s not a problem for us," Page said. "But as a whole, as we regulate the Internet, I think we’re not going to see the kind of innovation we’ve seen."