Google top question: to remove or not to remove?

Google has published its Transparency Report. In it, Google explains the following: often we receive “requests from government agencies and courts around the world to remove content from our services and hand over user data.” The removal of material usually refers to allegations of defamation; violation of local laws prohibiting hate speech or pornography; ads that violated Google’s AdWords policies; copyright infringement and so forth.

Who has made the most requests to remove content?

During the first half of 2011 Brazil has come No 1. There were 224 applications made to Goggle to remove content from their various websites (we have covered some of these cases here and here). From these applications Google eliminated the content in 67% of the cases. Next in the list is Germany followed by United States. As a curiosity I kept looking some other countries and I noticed that Argentina requested content removal 21 times and the percentage of removal requests fully or partially complied with was 100% [certainly they will receive the IPtango award if there was such a thing – however we need to bear in mind that they are the masters of tango after all]

Who has requested the most data about users?
This time the fisrt place was given to United States with 5950 requests and a response rate of 93%. Yet, Brazil was the most active country in Latin America requesting such data: 703 applications were made and 87 % of this data requests was fully or partially complied with.