Alphabet (GOOGL) Stock Drops, Appeals France's 'Right to be Forgotten' Ruling
NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- Alphabet (GOOGL) - Get Report stock is retreating 1.48% to $711.08 in early-afternoon trading on Thursday as its Google unit appeals a ruling by France's privacy watchdog to fine it 100,000 euros, or $112,000, for failing to remove "right-to-be-forgotten" requests.
France's order could upset international law and encourage totalitarian censorship, Google argued.
"We comply with the laws of the countries in which we operate," Google's senior VP and general counsel Kent Walker wrote in a blog post. "But if French law applies globally, how long will it be until other countries -- perhaps less open and democratic -- start demanding that their laws regulating information likewise have global reach?"
The right to be forgotten allows European residents to request that search engines remove links for searches tied to their names. Google weighs privacy against the public interest in deciding whether to approve the request, and has removed roughly 550,000 links from searches on European search engines or conducted in Europe, the Wall Street Journal reports.
The French data protection commission, Commission Nationale de l'Informatique et des Libertés, or CNIL, contends that the right to be forgotten doesn't equate to censorship since a link to the comment in question remains accessible on Google search. The link is just no longer tied to an individual's name.
Separately, TheStreet Ratings team rates the stock as a "buy" with a ratings score of A-.
Alphabet's strengths include its compelling growth in net income, revenue growth, largely solid financial position with reasonable debt levels by most measures, solid stock price performance and reasonable valuation levels.
You can view the full analysis from the report here: GOOGL
TheStreet Ratings objectively rated this stock according to its "risk-adjusted" total return prospect over a 12-month investment horizon. Not based on the news in any given day, the rating may differ from Jim Cramer's view or that of this article's author.
