When Google began remove links from the search results under “Right to be Forgotten” in the EU, there was a workaround that a searcher within the EU could go to Google.com and see those removed results.  Google was only removing them from the EU versions of the search engines, such as Google.fr.  But now Google plans to remove the links from all versions of Google, but only when those searchers are located within the EU.

When the change comes into effect, users will no longer be able to use Google.com to bypass the Right to be Forgotten restrictions.  Now, doing a search from within a EU country will not show Right to be Forgotten removed results on any Google version.  However, someone searching from outside the EU would still see those links within the search results.

Of course, searchers could still use a proxy or VPN in order to make it seem they are located outside the EU.  But this seems like a lot of work unless there is a specific reason for someone to try and see those results.  And the number of people who pay for a proxy or VPN service is declining after the recent Netflix change that prevents users from accessing Netflix from countries they are not located in.   And people could ask those outside the EU to do searchers.

It isn’t clear when the change will be making the change, but according to Reuters, Google “has notified all EU data protection authorities of the upcoming changes.”  This is a change the EU has been pushing for Google to make ever since Google first began scrubbing Right to be Forgotten results.