Google – Court Ruling (Norway, 2020)

An online newspaper article from 2012 mentioned the complainant's resignation as the head of an educational institution. The article states that the complainant resigned after three months, after the employees sent a letter to the board demanding the resignation of the manager. According to the article, the employees felt that the data subject did not have the right background for the position. The then chairman of the board and acting director confirms in the article that they received such a letter, but does not comment on its content or the relationship in general. It appears from the article that the online newspaper has tried to contact A several times, but that they have not succeeded in getting a comment from her. When the educational institution went bankrupt in the spring of 2014, a different party bought the bankruptcy estate and continued the operation of the educational institution in a new company. In 2017, the data subject asked Google to delete the search term for her name which led to the newspaper article in question. One year later, Google informed the complainant that it refuses to delete the search result. Despite appeals from the complainant, Google continued to refuse moving forward with the erasure request. The complainant also contacted the editor of the online newspaper online newspaper and the media company Amedia, which owns the newspaper, and requested that the article be deleted. The editor rejected the delete request, referring to the fact that the newspaper does not in principle delete articles from its website. Amedia stated that they do not interfere with the newspaper's editorial content. Consequently. the data subject complained to the Datatilsynet and requested assistance in having the search result deleted by searching for her name in Google. The DPA made a balance of interests between the consideration of freedom of information and the public's interest in having access to the search match by name search and the complainant's r