Agence-France Presse (AFP) has revealed in a widely-distributed report, citing the information shared by a Google official that Google has received 12,000 "right to be forgotten" requests from European citizens. In the requests, Google has been asked to remove search results which feature irrelevant personal data.

European citizens started making "right to be forgotten" requests to Google after the Internet search giant posted a webform last Friday, offering the European citizens a mechanism for seeking the removal of inappropriate personal information from Google's search results.

Google started offering the "right to be forgotten" webform to European citizens last Friday, in compliance with a May ruling by the European Court of Justice.

Despite the fact that Google has asserted that the webform is being offered as a placeholder till the company comes up with proper processes to comply with the court's ruling, over 12,000 content-removal requests were received by the company shortly after it allowed European users to file claims.

Meanwhile, noting that the European Court of Justice's "right to be forgotten" ruling has "raised the bar so high that the old rules of the internet no longer apply," Professor Luciano Floridi - who has been hired by Google to find out how it should comply with the landmark ruling - said that the main beneficiaries of the ruling will be "reputation management companies" as they can now "ask for embarrassing information about their clients to be removed."