Mediaboss Marketing

Google has received more than 1,000 requests from authorities to take down content from its search results or YouTube video in the last six months of 2011, the company said Monday, denouncing what it said was an alarming trend.

"Unfortunately, what we've seen over the past couple years has been troubling, and today is no different,'' Dorothy Chou, the search engine's senior policy analyst, said in a blogpost. "We hoped this was an aberration. But now we know it's not.''

Many of those requests targeted political speech, keeping up a trend Google

"It's alarming not only because free expression is at risk, but because some of these requests come from countries you might not suspect Western democracies not typically associated with censorship,'' said Chou.

In the second half of last year, Google said, it complied with around 65 percent of court orders and 47 percent of informal requests to remove content.

The censorship report offers an overview of which officials have asked Google to delete content and why.

In one case, Spanish regulators asked Google to remove 270 links to blogs and newspaper articles criticizing public figures, including mayors and public prosecutors.

So far Google has not complied. In March, Spain's highest court asked the European Court of Justice to examine whether requests by citizens to have content removed were lawful.

In some countries, Google says it has no choice but to submit to these requests, because certain types of political speech are unlawful.

In Germany, the company removes videos from YouTube with Nazi references because these are banned.

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Google: Government Censorship Requests ‘Alarming’