Estonians most likely to want to be forgotten

The European “right to be forgotten” has been in the news recently as it has been a little over 6 months since Google launched their formal process, allowing individuals to request the removal of search results for their name. But which Europeans are most and least likely to request removal from Google search results?

Germany, the UK, Italy and France all feature highly based on raw numbers, but that is to be expected given those are also the most populous countries. Looking at the numbers based on population the answer is, surprisingly Estonia. Unless some Estonians are submitting more than one request, which would be odd given one request can list multiple URLs to be removed, nearly one in every thousand Estonians have contacted Google requesting removal. At the other end of the scale, Bulgarians are the least likely to want to be forgotten with less than one request in ten thousand people with Greeks being close behind.

The UK comes right in middle of the pack. Despite the national stereotype, it appears we are no more shy than any other Europeans when it comes to having our details online.

Technical notes: Analysis is based on Google data as at 8th December, using World Bank population estimates from 2010. Countries with a population of less than 500,000 (Liechtenstein, Iceland) have been removed.