Google is averaging 10,000 requests to be forgotten every day

After the Court of Justice of the European Union ruled that Google and other search engines must take requests for search results to be deleted in what has become known as the “right to be forgotten,” Google immediately received 12,000 requests. That was before Google launched a tool for people to actually make requests. Late last week, the company did release one, and the number of requests has predictably skyrocketed. The Wall Street Journal is reporting that requests are actually averaging about 10,000 per day, and that Google said on Tuesday that it had already received 41,000 requests.

Requests are still rolling into Google Inc. in Europe for individual results to be deleted from Internet searches. Google Inc. said Tuesday that it had received 41,000 requests from people hoping to delete individual results that turn up for their name in the first four days after it posted a Web page to take the requests late last week. The page was part of Google’s response to a controversial court decision that enshrined the new “right to be forgotten” in mid-May. The figure suggests that while a wave of people looking to exercise their new right has crested since Friday, the flood is continuing. The number of requests works out to more than 10,000 a day through the end of day Monday, or roughly 7 a minute, compared with 20 requests a minute in the initial hours after Google posted the web form. Google may have to hire new staffers or redirect internal resources to handle the wave of requests, people familiar with the matter said.