Following the decision by the European Court of Justice in early May that individuals can ask Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) to remove links to certain documents that turn up in search results on the individual’s name, the search engine giant began on Wednesday to remove search results. The so-called right to be forgotten ruling compels Google and presumably other search engines to remove unwanted (as specified by the search’s subject) search results.

When search results are weeded, Google adds a message to the results page:

Some results may have been removed under data protection law in Europe. Learn more.

A Google spokesperson told the Financial Times:

Each request has to be assessed individually and we’re working as quickly as possible to get through the queue. We’ll continue to work with data protection authorities and others as we implement this ruling.

By the end of May, Google had received more than 40,000 requests from Europeans who want the company to remove their personal information from search results.

Google will not remove any results from searches on its U.S. website, so a determined European searcher will be able to get full results of a search on an individual’s name by simply using google.com instead of, say, google.fr.

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