If Google is the one making the call about whether or not someone is a public figure, where exactly do you expect them to draw the line? Do you honestly expect them to draw a line in the public interest?
Personally, I'd expect them to do everything they can to minimize the cost of compliance (where that cost primarily includes the cost of processing requests and the risk of being hauled into court again). In principle, they also care about search quality, but, as long as they deal with the most blatant cases, I think the impact on perceived (not actual) search quality will be small and the impact on relative search quality might even be positive (in other words that the best-case scenario for Bing is matching the precision of Google's blocks and they might do worse).
In practice, I think that means wild overblocking of results that should be public because the cost of refusing a request is larger and more immediate. And so far as I can tell that's what we're seeing so far.
Personally, I'd expect them to do everything they can to minimize the cost of compliance (where that cost primarily includes the cost of processing requests and the risk of being hauled into court again). In principle, they also care about search quality, but, as long as they deal with the most blatant cases, I think the impact on perceived (not actual) search quality will be small and the impact on relative search quality might even be positive (in other words that the best-case scenario for Bing is matching the precision of Google's blocks and they might do worse).
In practice, I think that means wild overblocking of results that should be public because the cost of refusing a request is larger and more immediate. And so far as I can tell that's what we're seeing so far.