Part of the unique beauty of the Internet is that enables every day users to share their views to a worldwide audience and have their voice heard.

In 2010, China locked horns with Google in condemning the search engine giant’s decision to lift censorship and redirect users based in mainland China to its unrestricted site in Hong kong. The same year Google threatened to abandon the Chinese market after a number of cyber attacks were traced back to China. (1)

However, it seems that it is not only China that is requesting Internet surveillance and censorship.

According to Google’s Transparency Report, requests from worldwide governments to remove Google search results and other services spiked more than 70% in the first half of 2012.

The report revealed that there were 1,791 requests to remove 17,746 pieces of content through June alone, as stated in the LA Times. (2)









The Google Transparency Report

Google launched its first Transparency Report in 2010, the year when the company had a particularly tumultuous time with China over Internet censorship. Google has since released the report twice a year, which breaks down requests from governments around the world for Google to remove content and to show the increasing pressure Google is up against to censor content.

With more than one billion users worldwide, Google is the natural target for gripes about content because after all, if you don’t rank well on Google you may as well be invisible on the online spectre.

Not only is Google the world’s largest search engine and an ubiquitous component of the internet, but it also runs YouTube, the world’s largest video sharing site.

The Transparency Report reveals that government efforts to censor the Internet are rising. For example, the Turkish government made just over 500 requests in the first half of 2012 to remove content from the internet, a 45% rise from the previous six months.

Surprisingly enough, the country with the second highest number of censorship requests was the very country touted as supporting freedom – the United States – making 273 appeals to have content removed compared to 187 requests shown in the previous report. (2)