BRUSSELS — Google has started removing some search results in the European Union after an EU court told it last month to respond to requests by people seeking the ‘‘right to be forgotten.’’
The company started offering an online tool to allow people to ask for search results to be redacted after the EU Court of Justice ruled on May 13 that citizens’ fundamental rights could be harmed by information on the Web and where there’s no public interest in publishing it.
The right-to-be-forgotten ruling was a surprise for Google and other companies already facing greater scrutiny over privacy practices in the 28-nation EU.
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Google has ‘‘been working round the clock to comply’’ with the court ruling, the company said on its website. It will assess each individual request and ‘‘balance the rights of the individual to control his or her personal data with’’ the public’s right to know and distribute information, it said.
To qualify for removal, personal information needs to be ‘‘inadequate, irrelevant, no longer relevant, or excessive.’’
California-based Google is ‘‘starting to take action on the removals requests that we’ve received,’’ said Al Verney, a spokesman for the company in Brussels.
‘‘Each request has to be assessed individually, and we’re working as quickly as possible to get through the queue.’’
Google is posting a statement that results may have been redacted on most searches made by Europeans on a person’s name, the company said. The notice appears even on searches for people who haven’t requested that any data be taken off the Web, Google said on its website.
While the company has said it’s received more than 50,000 requests to remove personal information from search results, it won’t specify how many it has got to date.