Almost one million URLs delinked by Google under EU 'right to be forgotten' law

Who is the 'media professional' that demanded Google de-link four articles 'reporting embarrassing content he posted to the internet'?

Google's latest transparency report reveals that it has received a total of 254,271 removal requests relating to 922,638 URLs - and removed links in its search engine to 381,050 or 41 per cent of them.

In the UK, Google received requests to de-link 126,799 URLs from 32,143 requests, with 37.6 per cent compliance from Google.

Ten websites hosted eight per cent of all the URLs that Google de-linked on request, with Facebook, Google Groups, YouTube, Google Plus and Twitter among the most requested. 192.com, the directory enquiries website also feature prominently, implying that many people wanted their potential personal contact details less prominently displayed in Google searches.

However, there are fears over whether access to legitimate information is being removed from the Google search engine - potentially sending people elsewhere.

"An individual who was convicted of a serious crime in the last five years but whose conviction was quashed on appeal asked us to remove an article about the incident. We removed the page from search results for the individual's name," the report claims.

It added: "A political activist [in Latvia] who was stabbed at a protest asked us to remove a link to an article about the incident. We have removed the page from search results for the victim's name."

And: "A teacher [in Germany] convicted for a minor crime over 10 years ago asked us to remove an article about the conviction. We have removed the pages from search results for the individual's name."

However, in a number of other cases, Google declined individuals' requests: "We received multiple requests from a single individual [in Italy] who asked us to remove 20 links to recent articles about his arrest for financial crimes committed in a professional capacity. We did not remove the pages from search results."

And in the UK: "An individual asked us to remove links to articles on the internet that reference his dismissal for sexual crimes committed on the job. We did not remove the pages from search results... A media professional requested that we remove four links to articles reporting on embarrassing content he posted to the internet. We did not remove the pages from search results."

Already, it is hard to perform a request on Google in the EU that doesn't contain the warning, "Some results may have been removed under data protection law in Europe", which may undermine confidence in Google as a search service and drive users to alternative search engines unencumbered by EU rules.