How an EU Court ruling against Google could hit computing costs

It was widely reported last month that the European Court of Justice ruled against search engine giant Google in a landmark data trial. Following the ruling, the US company has found itself legally obliged to delete links to information which users within Europe consider “inadequate, irrelevant or no longer relevant” (it is not obliged to delete the pages themselves from hosted servers, only remove links to those pages). Opinion is divided as to how workable this ruling is in practice, while concerns about the impact on computing costs are also arising.

The controversial decision, dubbed Europe’s ‘Right to be Forgotten’ clause, draws a cultural line between European nations and the United States. Beyond casual observations, though, we may soon have to be taking a serious look at the finances of Google’s new obligations.

Of course, it is not only Google that is compelled to follow the new court orders. The precedent should see smaller search engines like Yahoo!, Ask Jeeves and Bing also compelled to remove links on request. In other words, an ever-growing quantity of information will be held on hosted servers while being effectively invisible to mainstream web searches.

The economic effects of removing traffic from those hosted servers will probably be negligible for the immediate future, but search engines will have to dedicate significant budgets to coping with requests for ‘invisibility’ from European users. There seems to be no immediate way for companies to recoup these costs; the prospect of pay-per-use searches seems unthinkable. There may be an increase in paid services offered by providers like Google. For big software developer Microsoft, it seems likely that the company will invest considerably in offering a Bing privacy option that would give them a competitive edge against their incumbent rival, Google. How this cost could be recouped is also yet to be seen.

There is no guarantee that the European Court of Justice’s decision will stand, of course. While it does, though, the cost of doing business in Europe has gone up for search providers, especially dominant Google. Whether we see more paid Google services on offer or a higher premium on products like Microsoft Office 365, one thing is certain. Nothing comes for free.