NEW DELHI: Google's latest ‘Transparency Report' shows that a Vietnamese request to the search engine to “remove search results on a particular word that generated results that contained allegedly unflattering depictions of past Vietnamese leaders” was declined.
A comparison of content removal requests from various countries during the last six months of 2010 also revealed that the United Kingdom's Office of Fair Trading requested the removal of fraudulent ads linked to scams and the search engine complied by removing 93,360 items in total. From the United States, six court orders resulted in the removal of 1,110 items from Google Groups relating to a case of continuous defamation against a man and his family.
In China, during the period that Google's joint venture operated google.cn, its search results were subject to censorship pursuant to requests from government agencies responsible for Internet regulations. It did not disclose any information about content removal requests for the reporting periods from July 2009 to June 2010. However, during July-December 2010, the search engine did not receive any request from the Chinese government.
“Some content removals are requested due to allegations of defamation, while others are due to allegations that the content violates local laws prohibiting hate speech or pornography. Laws surrounding these issues vary by geographic region, and the requests reflect the legal context of a given jurisdiction,” the search engine said.
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