Google adds new stats, examples of government requests in latest Transparency Report

Google released the latest version of its Transparency Report today, revealing data about government requests the company received between June and December of 2013. According to the report, Google received 3,105 requests to remove 14,637 pieces of content within that time period, which brings the total number of requests received by the Mountain View corporation up to 6,591 for the entirety of 2013, a figure that’s about 60% higher than the previous calendar year.

The company notes in its blog post about the updated numbers, though, that the 3,105 requests it received in the second half of 2013 is actually a decrease from the all-time-high of 3,846 achieved in the first half of the year. “This is due to a spike in requests from Turkey during that period,” the company says, “which has since returned to lower levels.”

But while requests from Turkey have gone down, Google takes note of three countries where requests have grown: Russia, Thailand, and Italy. While the second two countries are “on the rise,” Russia in particular is of note, with requests up as much as 25% from the previous report. The company has provided some specific examples of requests made by the Russian government—and many others—on its Transparency Report website under the “Explore Requests” section.

More about that shortly—first, the data highlights. From June to December 2013, we received 3,105 government requests to remove 14,637 pieces of content. You may notice that this total decreased slightly from the first half of 2013; this is due to a spike in requests from Turkey during that period, which has since returned to lower levels. Meanwhile, the number of requests from Russia increased by 25 percent compared to the last reporting period. Requests from Thailand and Italy are on the rise as well.

As for what kinds of things countries are requesting be taken down, Google notes that the top three types of content were Blogger, Search, and YouTube, with them making up 1,066, 841, and 765 requests, respectively. During this same time period, 38% of requests were due to a claim of “defamation,” 16% were due to obscenity or nudity, and 11% were because of privacy or security concerns.

Google says that they’ve worked with Blue State Digital to make this year’s transparency report more interactive, making more information available to readers as well. If you want to check it out for yourself, head over to the Transparency Report site.