Google hit a new milestone after recently receiving its one millionth website takedown request, the company revealed in its transparency report. Those requests ask Google to take down content that may infringe copyright.
The company included a graph that shows the volume of requests to remove or de-list content due to alleged infringement.
Highlighting the list of requests are websites for the White House, U.S. Department of Justice, and NASA. Netflix, the New York Times, and the BBC are just a few others privileged enough to be among the one million.
Google also says it removed a staggering 2.13 billion URLs, or individual pages. Atop that list is popular movie data site IMDb. Google was asked more than 1,000 times to remove its URLs.
According to Google, the process for removing content is as follows:
- A copyright owner sends Google a takedown notice.
- If Google receives a complete request for removal, it will notify the administrator of the site.
- The admin of the site may then file a counter notification.
- Google makes the decision—if the copyright owner still believes the content is illegal they can take it to court.
That increasing trend line for requests to remove copyrighted content shouldn’t come as a surprise. Piracy is growing alongside the different forms of media that can now be found on the internet, making Google’s impossible task that much more difficult.
H/T Engadget