Google Inc. – Court Ruling (France, 2020)

In 2016, the CNIL fined Google Inc. 100,000 € for failing to comply with de-referencing request on all national versions of its search engine Google Search. Google challenged the decision before the Council of State. The CNIL claimed that the deletion of personal data has to be performed worldwide to provide effective protection of the rights of individuals. Google Inc. claimed that their measures adopted in March 2016 were sufficient. They implemented a mechanism which automatically redirects to the national version used by the data subject and which blocks the access, to delete the content for any Internet user identified as being located in the same territory. First, the Council of State recalled that the alleged breach of Google Inc. must be judged in accordance with the applicable law, back in 2016. Then, in the lights of the preliminary ruling, [http://curia.europa.eu/juris/document/document.jsf;jsessionid=16464B0169F79B4108F764FA1F804123?text=&docid=218105&pageIndex=0&doclang=EN&mode=lst&dir=&occ=first&part=1&cid=3004072 C-507/17], the Council of Stated issued that Google Inc. took sufficient and appropriate measures, and that the de-referencing obligation has to be implemented at the European level. C-507/17 ruling : "where a search engine operator grants a request for de-referencing pursuant to those provisions, that operator is not required to carry out that de-referencing on all versions of its search engine, but on the versions of that search engine corresponding to all the Member States, using, where necessary, measures which, while meeting the legal requirements, effectively prevent or, at the very least, seriously discourage an internet user conducting a search from one of the Member States on the basis of a data subject’s name from gaining access, via the list of results displayed following that search, to the links which are the subject of that request", Finally, the Court pointed out that the French government did not adopted any special p