It has long been considered a given that anything you send out into the ether becomes part of the Internet forever. There are no do-overs once the Google spiders crawl your words, so think twice before you submit something.

For the most part, that's enough warning.

What happens when you come across content about you or those around you that is mean, derogatory, defamatory, or just plain rude? Are you stuck hoping that no one sees it?

Yes and no.

While Google isn't going to pull arbitrarily because somebody's feathers got ruffled, they will honor a judge's court order. No, they can't "remove" the content from the Internet, but they will update what the spiders crawl and remove the offending page from the search results. It won't stop the page from ever being seen, but at least the chances someone will find it are drastically reduced.