India is among the top four countries in the world both in the categories that ask Google to remove content or request specific data. “Like other technology and communications companies, we regularly receive requests from government agencies around the world to remove content from our services, or provide information about users of our services and products,” Google says while making this information public at www.google.com/governmentrequests
Between July 1 and December 31, 2009 India made 142 data removal requests while it made 1061 data requests. In the data remove request category it was number three behind Brazil (291) and Germany (188), in the data request category it was number four behind Brazil (3663), United States (3580), and United Kingdom (1166). The US, incidentally is also among the top four countries.
In its FAQs Google describes the difference between data request and removal request thus: “Removal requests ask for removal of content from Google search results or from another Google product, including YouTube. For purposes of this report, data requests ask for information about Google user accounts or products.”
In terms of the average of percentage of compliance in the first four countries, Google’s table indicated it was upward of 75 percent. What that means that 75 percent of the time Google carried out the request to remove certain data.
I was curious to find out about where China, which is notorious for controlling access to the Internet, figures in all this. Google just offers a ? against China for this reason: “You may have noticed that there’s a question mark for content removal requests from China. As noted in the map, Chinese officials consider censorship demands as state secrets, so we cannot disclose that information at this time. During the period that Google’s joint venture operated google.cn, its search results were subject to censorship pursuant to demands from government agencies responsible for Internet regulation. As we announced in March, users visiting google.cn are now being redirected to google.com.hk where we are offering uncensored search results.”
In the specific context of Brazil and India Google says: “For Brazil and India, government requests for content removal are high relative to other countries in part because of the popularity of our social networking website, orkut. The majority of the Brazilian and Indian requests for removal of content from orkut relate to alleged impersonation or defamation.”
As an aside, let me mention without any reason whatsoever that there does not seem to be any request for data or its removal about what I do on the net.