Google has never liked privacy laws, and it really hated Europe’s “Right to be Forgotten” ruling in 2014.

The RTBF ruling gave private citizens the right to ask for the removal of search entries that contained personal information that was old and irrelevant, for which there was no public interest. It was a privilege previously only affordable to the wealthy.

The court ruled that a dominant search engine was perpetually publishing the same stuff, and if the information, such as a news story about a teenage indiscretion, was irrelevant, this breached one’s human rights.

But Google howled and sympathetic academics and poorly informed media luvvies joined in. Information would disappear, just like in George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty Four! It was like removing the index cards from the library – nobody would ever find anything ever again!