20
April
2010
|
01:07 AM
America/Los_Angeles

GOOG Comms Chief: How Google Censors Its Own Content

Rachel Whetstone, head of Google's global communications, writes that:

Google products -- from search and Blogger to YouTube and Google Docs -- have been blocked in 25 of the 100 countries where we offer our services.

She presented an overview of how Google censors its own content, in different countries, and the differences across its products.

...for example, those that make pro-Nazi material illegal in Germany and France -- and remove search results from only our local search engine (for example, www.google.de in Germany). We also comply with youth protection laws in countries like Germany by removing links to certain material that is deemed inappropriate for children or by enabling Safe Search by default, as we do in Korea.

...Our enforcement of these policies results in the removal of more content from our hosted content platforms than we remove from Google Search. Blogger, as a pure platform for expression, is among the most open of our services, allowing for example legal pornography, as long as it complies with the Blogger Content Policy.

Read more here: Official Google Blog: Controversial content and free expression on the web: a refresher