[HenryMc]

> It appears the overwhelming (?) majority of young American internet users, who have come of age in the post 9/11 USA are disturbingly willing to relinquish as many freedoms and rights, as is demanded of them.

I see Google's censorship as an attack on "freedoms and rights".

> HNers to fall into knee-jerk behavioral patterns of vociferously defending all that is Google

I personally hate Google, and avoid their products whenever possible. I've used Bing for a number of years, and recently switched most of my searching to DuckDuckGo.

> European little guy has scored an important victory that gives them the tools to improve their quality of life

I don't think this is an "important victory", but rather an attack on the freedom of information.

P.S. I live in Australia and New Zealand.

[zxcdw]

> I see Google's censorship as an attack on "freedoms and rights".

Have I misunderstood something, but isn't this exactly about giving people a right to choose about the online visibility of their name?

If that is the case, isn't it a good thing that people get to have control over what is being shown and what is not? Or is full disclosure of personal details, the full personal transparency online the Right Thing to go with?

I thought a year ago during the NSA diclosures the consensus was that people should have the right to control the information collected, stored and shown about them. I see this paralleling that indirectly.

For what it's worth and to give someone something to grab onto, I am from Europe.

[wombosi]

>I personally hate Google, and avoid their products whenever possible.

You took my quote out of context and ran with that. I said many HNers. Not all HNers.

There is no censorship involved here. Read the EU ruling. The ruling does not prevent Google from indexing personal information. It prevents Google from permanently indexing personal information if it is irrelevant or no longer relevant. Even after said information has been removed from Google's database, it will still be available at the source that Google previously linked too. It's fallacious to pretend that information is being surpressed.

[Oletros]

The problem is defining what it is irrelevant

Wby Bing or Google can't index a La Vanguardia article? Why they are the ones censoring that name and not La Vanguardia?