The French data protection authority has fined Google 100,000 euros ($111,720) for not complying with the an injunction to extend removing of requested links to all of its search engine's domain name extensions. The Commission Nationale de l'Informatique et des Libertes (CNIL)

The only way for Google to uphold the Europeans' right to privacy was by delisting inaccurate results popping up under name searches across all its websites, the Commission Nationale de l'Informatique et des Libertes (CNIL) said in a statement on Thursday.

As part of a 2014 decision of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) Internet users residing in Europe can, under certain conditions, ask search engines to delist information about them. Should a search engine refuse to delist search results or respond unsatisfactorily, Internet users residing in Europe can take the matter to their national data protection authorities.

On these grounds, Internet users whose request to delist Internet links on the "Google Search" engine had been turned down lodged a complaint with the CNIL. After investigating the complaints, the CNIL asked Google to delist several results. It requested that the delisting be applied to the entire search engine, regardless of the domain name's geographic extension (".fr", ".com", etc.). But while Google responded to some of these requests, it delisted search results only on the search engine's European geographic extensions. As a result, the delisted content remained accessible on the ".com" and non-European extensions.

Accordingly, in May 2015 the CNIL Chair issued a formal injunction to the company to extend delisting to all of the "Google Search" extensions within 15 days.

Given Google's failure to comply with the injunction within the allotted time frame, the CNIL Chair decided to initiate a sanctions procedure against the company.

On January 21, 2016, Google proposed a solution.

In addition to delisting on all of its search engine's European extensions, Google undertook to filter results based on the geographic origin of the person performing the search. This means that people using the search engine from the same country than the plaintiff’s country do not access the delisted result any more.

"Only delisting on all of the search engine's extensions, regardless of the extension used or the geographic origin of the person performing the search, can effectively uphold this right." CNIL said.

"The solution that consists in varying the respect for people's rights on the basis of the geographic origin of those viewing the search results does not give people effective, full protection of their right to be delisted."