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By Julia Fioretti BRUSSELS (Reuters) – Google Inc is refusing to bow to an order from the French privacy watchdog to scrub search results worldwide when users invoke their “right to be forgotten” online, it said on Thursday, exposing itself to possible fines. The French data protection authority, the CNIL, in June ordered the search engine group to de-list on request search results appearing under a person's name from all its websites, including Google.com. Google complied with the ruling and has since received more than a quarter of a million removal requests, according to its transparency report.

(Reuters) – Plaintiffs in an antitrust lawsuit against Google Inc on Friday withdrew their case accusing the search engine company of harming smartphone buyers by forcing handset makers using Android operating system to make Google's own applications the default option. The class action lawsuit, filed by two smartphone customers in May 2014, was dismissed on Feb. 20 by U.S. District Judge Beth Labson Freeman in San Jose, California. The lawsuit argued that Google requires Android handset manufacturers such as Samsung Electronics Co Ltd favor Google's apps such as YouTube and restrict competing apps like Microsoft Corp's Bing search.