Google forgives and forgets your youth sins

Are there any pictures or movies of you online that you would really like to hide? Things you've done who seemed really innocent back then, but that is now something you really don't want to get confronted with? Unfortunately, Google is everywhere and will always look over your shoulder. If you type in your name in the search engine those embarrassing party pictures will still be there. Also when your potential employer looks up your online behaviour. 

Delete button

Google CEO Eric Schmidt firstly always persevered steadfastly: 'If you already did something you don't want anyone to know about, then you shouldn't have done it', but it seems that he comes back to that. Google now seems to understand that it is indeed not pleasant to be faced with what you did in the past, for your entire life. 'The absence of a delete button on the internet is an important problem. There are certain situations where deleting is the right thing to do', said Eric Schmidt earlier in May, during an event at the New York University. Schmidt gives the example of a person who is under 18 and who has been convicted of a crime. If that person is an adult his conviction will be deleted, but online there will still be scraps of the fact that he was engaged in misconduct. This can seriously hamper a person, for example, that the person cannot get a job.

At least preserve until?

Google is already a step closer by saying that they will not save information from users for eternity. Eric Schmidt says,  during a congress of the British paper The Telegraph, nothing about the length of the period that Google saves information, but he does say: 'There is a point when Google 'forgets' the information we know about you, because this is the right thing to do.'

The government is watching Google

Pretty striking, because Google firstly was kind of casual about it all. How could this be? Google is exploring the edges of privacy for some time now, but this goes no longer unnoticed by the government and the consumer. Governments try to desperately adapt and develop laws to maintain our society 3.0 in this flow of public information. Maybe Google feels the increasing pressure of governments where online privacy is more and more a much debated topic.