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The
regulator (CNIL) said in a statement that if Google does not
comply within 15 days, it can launch a process leading to
sanctions, ramping up pressure on the U.S. giant following a
landmark European legal ruling.
In May last year, the European Court of Justice ruled that
European residents can ask search engines to delete results that
turn up under a search for their name when they are out of date,
irrelevant or inflammatory - the so-called right to be
forgotten.
Since then, Google and other search engines such as Microsoft's
Bing and Yahoo have begun to grant de-listing requests when they
meet certain criteria.
But there has been much debate over the implementation,
especially of Google's decision only to scrub results from
European sites, leading some to appeal to local regulators.
The company maintains it should only apply the ruling across its
European domains, such as Google.fr in France and Google.de in
Germany.
But EU data protection watchdogs, many legal experts and former
German Justice Minister Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger, who
has advised Google on privacy following the European ruling,
think it should be global.
Some individuals have taken Google to court to try to force a
change. They include Dan Shefet, a French lawyer born in
Denmark, who won a defamation case in a French court recently
that experts say called for the results to be scrubbed globally.
"In accordance with the (European court) judgment, the CNIL
considers that in order to be effective, de-listing must be
carried out on all extensions of the search engine and that the
service provided by Google search constitutes a single
processing," the CNIL regulator said.
France is the first country to open a potential sanctions
process against Google if it does not change its position. But
the powers of the CNIL remain limited, since it can only impose
fines of up to 150,000 euros ($168,000).
The Mountain View, California-based Google had revenue of $66
billion last year.
A Google spokesman said the company had been cooperating closely
with data protection authorities and was seeking the right
balance in applying the European Court's decision.
"The ruling focused on services directed to European users, and
that's the approach we are taking in complying with it," said
the spokesman.
(Reporting by Leila Abboud and Julia Fioretti; Editing by David
Clarke)
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