Governments make content removal requests to remove information from Google products, such as blog posts or YouTube videos.
These numbers represent the requests we received from government entities for the removal of content in six-month blocks. There are limits to what this data can tell us. There may be multiple requests that ask for the removal of the same piece of content. The report provides percentages of content removal we comply with in whole or in part.
There are limits to what this data can tell us. There may be multiple requests that ask for the removal of the same piece of content. The report provides percentages of content removal requests we comply with in whole or in part.
In addition, we haven't released specific numbers for countries in which we received fewer than 10 content removal requests and items to be removed. Many of those isolated requests may coincide with our own content policies, so when the numbers get small enough, they don't necessarily reflect anything about the particular laws of policies of that country. Similarly, if a government agency used a web form where we can't identify the party reporting the request to remove content, we generally have no way of including those reports in our statistics.
No. Our policies and systems are set up to identify and remove child pornography whenever we become aware of it, regardless of whether that request comes from the government. As a result, it's difficult to accurately track which of those removals were requested by governments, and we haven't included those statistics here. We counted requests for removal of all other types of content (e.g., alleged defamation, hate speech, impersonation). In addition, for YouTube, we generally have not included government requests for removal of copyrighted content unless there are extraordinary circumstances behind the request. The vast majority of requests for removal of copyrighted material on YouTube are received from private parties; some may come from state or foreign governments, but that number is very low. Regardless, such requests are not reflected in these statistics.
The "removal request" numbers represent the number of requests we have received per country; the percentage we complied with in full or in part; and the number of individual items of content requested to be removed.
Some governments and government agencies choose to block specific services as a means of controlling access to content in their jurisdiction. The content removal numbers we've reported do not include any data on government-mandated service blockages. Our Traffic graphs show you when Google services have been inaccessible.
Yes. The statistics we report here do not include content removals that we regularly process every day across our products for violation of our content policies (for example, we do not permit hate speech in Blogger and other similar products) in response to user complaints. In many cases these requests result in the removal of material that violates local law, independent of any government request or court order seeking such removal.
There are many reasons we may not have complied. Some requests may not specific enough for us to know what the government wanted us to remove (for example, no URL is listed in the request), and others involve allegations of defamation through informal letters from government agencies rather than a court orders. We generally rely on courts to decide if a statement is defamatory according to local law.
There are several independent organizations that release regular reports about government requests for information and content removal, including Chilling Effects and the Open Net Initiative.
These observations on content removal requests highlight some trends that we've seen in the data during each reporting period, and are by no means exhaustive.
Prior to the January-June 2011 reporting period we were not tracking the reasons for removal requests at a very granular level. As a result of this many requests were classified as "Other" instead of something more specific.
When we receive content removal requests for AdWords, the requests typically only cite the URLs that allegedly violate the law or our policies. One URL can pertain to hundreds or thousands of ads. If we decide to remove ads in response to the request, we will look into the total number of ads that the request may affect. We only display the total number of ads requested to be removed when we comply with a removal request for AdWords. When we do not comply with the request, we count the number of URLs requested to be removed, so the number of items may be lower.
Transparency Report