Google is a strange company.  On one hand, they’re accused of infringing on the fair-use rights of users with their aggressive policing of DMCA take-down notices on YouTube and infringing on privacy rights with their Google Street View cars.  On the other hand, they’re more than willing to stand up to governments who try to push them into censoring the web.  At least, to an unprecedented degree.  However, some government requests for content removal are granted, and in the spirit of openness, Google is tracking and releasing take-down request information.

The site is called Government requests directed to Google and YouTube, and it basically tracks what governments ask them to take down, as well as the number of requests for user information the governments make.  It also tracks the percentage of those take-down orders Google complied with, what number of them were court ordered, and even what Google service the material was taken down from.

For example, the United States had 123 removal requests, 44 of them (by my count) by court order.  Google complied with 80% of take-down requests.  The window revealed covers July1 through December 31, 2009, and will update every six months with fresh numbers.

Tags: Google, Google Government Requests, YouTube, government requests for information, censorship monitor, government requests for content removal, Google terms of service, taking down information, removing pages from Google at government request

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