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Internet search engine giant Google revealed that the British Government made more requests for information and content to be removed from their search engine results pages than any other country in Europe, according to figures released earlier today.

The UK Government has made over 1,000 requests in the last six months for information about UK citizens. Britain came third out of roughly 100 countries where Google has a presence and was ranked only behind the USA and Brazil – Although if China had been included it surely would’ve won.

Between July and December 2009, Google received 1,166 requests for data from British Government agencies, 59 of which were requests for content to be removed from the search engine results pages. Google then complied with over 75% of the removal requests.

Google’s chief legal officer said that Google had decided to make the figures available to the public in the interests of transparency.
“Government censorship of the web is growing rapidly: from the outright blocking and filtering of sites, to court orders limiting access to information and legislation forcing companies to self-censor content,” he said.

“So it’s no surprise that Google, like other technology and telecommunications companies, regularly receives demands from government agencies to remove content from our services.“

Currently Google provides the number of requests made by Governments for the supplying and removal of data. No information is available about the nature of the individual requests – although Google states that they plan to improve and fine tune these reports which will be issued every six months.

“We are looking into how we can better provide resources and support for developing technology designed to combat and circumvent Internet censorship.”

“We believe that more information generally means more choice, more freedom and ultimately more power for the individual.”