Search engines’ comprehensive digital memory has led to a desire for greater informational
self-determination. The seminal judgment in Google Spain gave impetus to the development
of data protection law as the preferred legal remedy for claimants who seek to erase their
digital past. This article argues that the ‘right to be forgotten’ is a contourless and illconceived
right, which can apply to a variety of markedly dissimilar cases, while paying
insufficient regard to the fundamental rights of search engine users, website publishers and of
the search engines themselves. Even though the decoupling of names from search results does
not interfere with the original expression, it is intended to suppress this expression by
drastically reducing its findability and hence its significance in the digital age. Search
engines, with their intransparent modus operandi, are entrusted to unravel the Gordian knot
between data protection and freedom of expression. But as the ‘right to be forgotten’ begins
to cast its overly broad net over press archives, the Gordian knot risks tightening further
