How do I remove my Twitter picture from Google Images?

[Will]

Hi, I uploaded a really ugly picture of me on Twitter, and now it is on Google Images. I deleted the picture from Twitter about a week ago, and it's still on Google Images. How do I get rid of it?

[xcEzra]

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?...230AAytJTv

[Brandon]

The first paragraph of the linked answer is correct. You cannot completely destroy something once it has been on the Internet for a significant amount of time, only make it harder to find by removing the copy you put up. Attempts to destroy something many people thought was interesting will result in it being reanimated indefinitely like some kind of digitized zombie.

The remainder of that post is complete BS. Cookies have absolutely nothing to do with it. The reason you can't completely get rid of it immediately is because A) other people who saw it and saved it before you deleted it can always repost it to another site, and B) search engines like Google operate by making temporary copies of everything they 'see' by browsing the internet from link to link and then searching through those copies when people ask them to find something. Those copies are 'cached' pages and images that remain on Google for some time after they last checked your website.

Basically, Google keeps a copy of your picture temporarily and anyone else can distribute copies of it permanently. As a general rule, assume everything you put on a webpage to be public knowledge that you can't remove. you may be able to temporarily remove the image from Google search but odds are the request will be denied because you obviously don't own the Twitter website.