There's no real noticeable expense to this to these companies. The only real expense is to the people who will be unable to find specific information online in a format they expect. Thankfully, lots of other folks are reposting all the removed information to make it even more visible than it was before. Ironically, most of the 'unfairly affected' looking to have their previous misdeeds and criminal behavior forgotten will only be drawing international attention to it.

The problem is that this doesn't scale. Sure, people are sharing the information now, because it's part of a current story, but 2 years from now? And the party affected isn't an organisation with the reach of the Times?

The audience that is looking at these 'deleted Google listings' probably has very little overlap with the influential decision-makers in these peoples lives who Google his/her name before making said decision though.