Google’s decision to remove a BBC article from some of its search results was “not a good judgement”, a European Commission spokesman has said.
A link to an article by Robert Peston was taken down under the European court’s “right to be forgotten” ruling.
But Ryan Heath, spokesman for the European Commission’s vice-president, said he could not see a “reasonable public interest” for the action.
He said the ruling should not allow people to “Photoshop their lives”.
The BBC understands that Google is sifting through more than 250,000 web links people wanted removed.
The figure relates to more than 70,000 individual requests made between 29 May and 30 June – with an average of 3.8 links requested per person.
After an initial surge, the rate of requests has levelled out at about 1,000 per day.
The highest number of requests so far has originated in France, with 14,086 requests made in the same period. France is followed by Germany, with 12,678, and the UK with 8,497.
It is not known how many of the requests have been successful.
BBC.