Google LLC – Court Ruling (Greece, 2024)

The data subject is a journalist, who in 2011 started receiving backlash for publishing her research on generic drugs. Many websites posted abusive, defamatory and derogatory comments about her being transexual. Google associated her name with the derogatory and defamatory comments about her and, as a result, upon googling her name, those terms came up as an auto suggestion/auto completion in the search tool. In 2012, the data subject filed a case before the court of first instance (Athens Court of First Instance) against the U.S. based Google LLC and the Greek subsidiary, Google Greece, (controllers) requesting that the said auto suggestions/auto completions and links to the said pages would be deleted since they constituted a violation of her personality and damaged her honour and reputation. The court issued interim measures and then a decision ordering the controllers to cease and desist from associating in any way her name with these words and prevent any future posting of similar content in the search results. The court found that the controllers violated her personality rights under Greek law (Civil code, Articles 57-59) and awarded her €30,000 in non material damages. Nevertheless, the auto suggestions/auto completions regarding her name and the links were not deleted and the data subject contacted Google LLC and Google Greece multiple times in an attempt to resolve this. On their behalf, the controllers instructed her to file a request on their platform and point out the certain URLs for deletion. Both parties appealed before the court of appeal (Athens Court of Appeal). The controllers claimed that the court of first instance erred in the application of the law, arguing that they were not liable for the content of the third-party posts on the Internet appearing in the search engine and that they may remove specific URLs only if they are notified (with a specific reference) by the data subject. The data subject claimed a higher compensation. The court