Google Receives Over 1 Million Takedown Requests Per Month

Sites include Google.com . Published on June 8th, 2012. Written by Anthony West.

There’s a little joke among internet sharers that “you can find almost anything with Google.” In many respects this joke is closer to a sobering reality and a new transparency report highlighting the number of takedown requests received by the search giant seems to corroborate this fact.

According to the report, the search giant receives around 1 million of such requests each month from a variety of organizations. Many of these organizations are third-party companies acting as copyright watchdogs and enforcers for big-name brands like Microsoft.

According to the search giant, “97% of search results specified in requests that we received between July and December 2011 were removed without question.” This ‘without question’ removal is due to the large number of URLs containing copyrighted material—most of which are links sharing software and other important (and expensive) data.

This latest transparency report from Google will be good news for software manufactures and music and entertainment companies who have held Google as aiding and abetting online piracy. It will also help to ingratiate Google with the companies that are loosely affiliated with its success on Wall Street.

As for file sharers, the upload of copyrighted material and pirated software will no doubt continue. Even with big name companies like Megaupload biting the dust, file sharing will stay alive in one way or another.