Google won a battle over the right to be forgotten after France's top administrative court canceled a fine of €100,000 ($111,000) for failing to remove contentious search results globally.
France's Council of State threw out the 2016 penalty, following guidance from the European Union's highest court, which last year backed the Alphabet Inc. unit by saying it should only scrub search results on European versions of its websites.
The right to be forgotten stems from a landmark ruling nearly six years ago, where the EU court forced the U.S. tech giant to remove European links to websites that contain out of date or false information that could unfairly harm a person's reputation.
The French court said national law doesn't currently allow the country's privacy authority, CNIL, to order results to be removed globally and can only demand search results be stripped within Europe. CNIL said it would update guidelines to follow the tribunal's ruling.