Google started replying to people asking to amend their search results: we don’t own the Internet. we just report.
Why the brouhaha? well, have a look at this article.
And my comment is?
I agree with Google. Completely.
Yes- you post something and then regret.
But then- get used about it.
I am much more incensed by sites like “spock”, that used to build a virtual profile, à la linkedin, and then reply something like: we build the profile out of open sources; if you can prove that you are who you say, you can amend it, but we will not delete it
I see that recently something happened- as my profile is getting closer to a search result from linkedin or google than the old “spooky” (more than “spock”-like) profile.
Google is right: if you search, you find what is there in the open.
I too have plenty of links with old conferences etc, whose address e-mail I would like to amend: but, often, the webmaster went away, leaving a page from more than 10 years ago up there- and nobody to update it.
I think that the *users* should grow up: just because everything is visible, does not imply that you should do value judgement on the person as (s)he is now.
Simply: we will get eventually used to see the full life of people online- and focus only on the overall “trend” in a person, and the current issue, not on some distant past.
Think like this: when you meet somebody in the office, do you ask them what they did when they were kids? Wouldn’t that be a little bit inappropriate?
20 years from now- it will change.
Well, have a look at “The Light of Other Days” from Arthur C Clarke and Stephen Baxter, for an idea about what the future of privacy could be- and why I say that the user should grow, not the system build fences etc 
