Government Requests to Remove Content
Government requests to remove content from Google products, across 30 reporting periods, 178 countries, 61 products, and 22 stated reasons. Built around multi-period trends — every filter becomes a time series. Figures are Google’s own reporting; a “request” ranges from court orders to executive or police demands, and counts what was asked to be removed, not what was found unlawful.
Items targeted for removal, by period
Removal rate over time
Share of all targeted items Google removed on legal or policy grounds. Items already gone before Google acted count toward the total but not as removals.
Top 10 countries by items targeted
Top reasons cited
Top Google products targeted
How Google responded
Records (top 50 by items targeted)
What the columns mean
Requests — the number of government removal requests. A single request that names several products or reasons is counted once in each, so this column sums request entries, not unique requests. Items targeted — individual items (URLs, accounts, posts) governments asked Google to remove. Items removed — items Google removed on legal or policy grounds; it excludes items that were already gone before Google acted (those appear under “Already removed” in “How Google responded”).
| Period | Country | Requestor | Product | Reason | Requests | Items targeted | Items removed |
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