Don’t Force Google to ‘Forget’ - NYTimes.com

Final paragraphs from another Internet regulation reality check; also see Google’s Schmidt Says Europe Court Struck Wrong Balance in Privacy Case (WSJ)

"Whatever the solution, the status quo is no longer stable. In the wake of the decision by the European Court of Justice, search engine companies now face a potential avalanche of requests for redaction. And whatever the merits of the court’s decision, Europe cannot expect to export its new approach to countries like the United States. (Even in Europe, search engine users will no doubt cultivate the same Internet “workarounds” that Chinese citizens use to see what their government doesn’t want them to see.)

Google, Bing and Yahoo should devote their considerable resources to mitigating this problem. If they don’t, search engine results may become increasingly dependent on where your keyboard is, rather than what you’re looking for. And the search engines may find themselves in a cat-and-mouse game of censorship and evasion, leading only to a fragmentation, not an improvement, of the web."

Don’t Force Google to ‘Forget’ - NYTimes.com