Following a ruling recently made by the European Court of Justice, Google was forced to create a system whereby European citizens can instruct Google to remove specific web pages from its search index. This means that when people search certain terms that would have previously returned a particular web page among the results, that page is no longer served by Google. The new “right to be forgotten” rule has been somewhat controversial, with many people calling it censorship.
Now, one developer has taken matters into his own hands and created a website with the sole purpose of exposing search terms and web pages that have been hidden from Google.
Appropriately dubbed “Hidden from Google,” the website’s sole purpose is to list pages that have been removed from Google’s index in Europe as a result of right to be forgotten requests. Listings on the site are scarce for the time being, but ZDNet reports that the site’s creator is working on a system to verify user submissions.
The site also finds some hidden pages on its own. “In a few (rare) instances, we search for censored articles by search terms which are inspired by well known scandals / news stories in the recent past,” Hidden from Google creator Afaq Tariq told ZDNet.
Do you know of a web page that was hidden from Google search? User submissions can be made on Hidden from Google’s homepage.
