> I don't really see how it would be contempt of court
Well I do, and I can guarantee you that courts would see it too. In Europe, laws generally aren't to be interpreted by the letter. You can't game them with technicalities (well it depends, but in this case it's quite clear).
> In Europe, laws generally aren't to be interpreted by the letter.
That's a very general statement and generally untrue (although you are in this case, partially correct). Acts and statutes are always interpreted by the letter, you are perhaps confusing this by making a comparison of these EU statutes with common law or jus commune as that is interpreted by "the spirit of the law" (usually informed by case-law, constitutions etc. depending on the country).
Acts and statutes are not common law (or natural law), and these EU measures are enabled by acts and statutes in each separate EU member state. So they are indeed interpreted to the letter as these acts must be implemented in states with codified constitutions (where one court has supreme interpretation of a constitution and must apply EU law with direct effect, although the big ones haven't done this till recently) and ones without (where there is an indirect effect of law). This is known as the Supremacy Doctrine[1]. The only exception is when the interpretation comes from the European Court of Justice.
The part you are absolutely right about, is that in this specific case, interpretation will not be up to each member state as this amendment was straight from the European Court of Justice. Generally, however, as far as "European law" goes, until we have an actual constitution or become an actual federation, your general statement is untrue most of the time (lets not forget the EU is enabled by treaties and if you don't think the letter matters in a treaty then I have come contracts I'd love you to sign...)
Well that was my entire point: that Google was doing everything it could to fight the EU's "right to be forgotten" short of simply deciding (like they did with China) to stop operating a search engine in EU's jurisdiction.
My point is that stopping operating their search engine in the EU, while redirecting European domains to Google.com, and keeping headquarters there, would be contempt of court. Because it's very obviously not following the court's decision. Whereas obeying the court order in Europe but not in the rest of the world is completely normal.
Of course, stopping all operations in EU altogether would be fine too, but they're not going to do that.
Well I do, and I can guarantee you that courts would see it too. In Europe, laws generally aren't to be interpreted by the letter. You can't game them with technicalities (well it depends, but in this case it's quite clear).