
Google’s Surprising Role as Privacy Watchdog in Europe - hvo
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/19/technology/google-europe-privacy-watchdog.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=second-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0
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lucb1e
Title, basically: Google is a privacy watchdog in Europe.

Content, basically: Google secretly passes judgement on millions of people's
right to be forgotten and does not want to talk about it. Some French
organization (which does not seem to be anything government related, but it
doesn't say) agrees with Google "most of the time", though, so we've got that
going for us.

I fail to see how this is anywhere close to a "privacy watchdog". Speaking as
a Dutchman, organizations like Privacy First or Bits of Freedom (both are
Dutch) would be privacy watchdogs, not Google who passes judgement on over 500
cases a day just because they're a big player.

> "Other search companies, including Microsoft, have been given the same
> authority, though their number of judgments pales by comparison."

Yeah, and their market share also pales by comparison. Big surprise.

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moondowner
Another organization worth mentioning is EDRi:
[https://edri.org/](https://edri.org/)

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zimbatm
This article is weird. Google never asked to be regulating this, puts in place
a small team to handle the load and then the journalist wonders why they don't
want to answer questions about methodology: because it can only backfire.
Ideally for Google they wouldn't have to deal with this anymore, that's why
they are publishing reports like this the big totals:

[https://www.google.com/transparencyreport/removals/europepri...](https://www.google.com/transparencyreport/removals/europeprivacy/)

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nunobrito
Share same opinion as @lucb1e, that title is misleading.

Google's role is not surprising nor understood as a privacy watchdog on this
context, the company is complying (better or worse) with a right provided to
EU citizens.

An example of true privacy watchdog (besides the others already mentioned)
would be the FSFE or Julia Reda:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julia_Reda](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julia_Reda)

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fauigerzigerk
So to have something removed from Google's search engine you ask Google to
remove it. How does that make Google a watchdog?

This article makes it appear as if something unusual were happening, but I
don't see that at all.

If everyone goes straight to the government or to the courts for every single
minor dispute, then I know already who we will all be working for pretty soon.

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lucideer
I'm guessing the intent of the title was to mean "A privacy watchdog should be
an independent, possibly public entity, so it's surprising and problematic
that a large US corporation has this level of influence over decisions on
privacy in Europe".

However, without reading the article content, it very much comes across as
"Google is doing such surprisingly benign work that it fills the role of
privacy watchdog for Europe".

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brudgers
Recent related regarding Google's relationship to privacy:
[http://www.businessinsider.com/google-already-mapped-tens-
of...](http://www.businessinsider.com/google-already-mapped-tens-of-thousands-
of-stores-for-in-store-visits-analytics-2016-4)

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gefh
If a public body were to rule on this volume of cases, I assume it would be
overwhelmed and expensive.

