Court of Justice judgment · Case C-131/12

Google Spain SL and Google Inc. v Agencia Española de Protección de Datos (AEPD) and Mario Costeja González

Reviewed by Sergio Maldonado Elvira on 29 October 2026

Case: C-131/12
Court: Court of Justice
Date of judgment: 13 May 2014
ECLI: ECLI:EU:C:2014:317
Instrument: Directive 95/46/EC (pre-GDPR; reasoning still applied under the GDPR)
Provisions: Article 4(2), Article 4(7), Article 3(1), Article 17, Article 21

Listed under "Related (earlier law or other instruments)": this judgment concerns earlier law or another instrument, not the GDPR alone.

Holding (summary, not the official text)

A search engine operator processes personal data and is a controller for that processing; EU law applies where it has an establishment selling advertising in a Member State; and a person can ask it to remove links to information about them that is inadequate, irrelevant or no longer relevant, after a balancing of rights.

Checked against the official source on 28 October 2026.

Only the judgment as published by the Court of Justice is authoritative. This is reference material, not legal advice.

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