Office of Fair Trading asks Google to remove 93,000 dodgy adverts

THE UK OFFICE OF FAIR TRADING (OFT) has kept Google busy by asking it to remove 93,360 fraudulent adverts during the second half of 2010 that it claimed were linked to scams.

Google updated its transparency report, which shows a country by country breakdown of content removal requests that Google had to deal with between July and December 2010. Google released the figures to show users how much involvement government agencies have in displaying information on the internet's most popular website.

Although the report shows Google receives the most user data removal requests from the US government, the UK's OFT has been keeping Google's advertisers in check by requesting and gaining the removal of 93,360 adverts that it claimed were linked to scams. The UK government asked for 38 pieces of content to be removed, fewer than the US government, which made 54 removal requests.

Google said that 89 per cent of all content removal requests it received in the UK were fully or partially complied with. It also cited an increase in the number of requests received for user account information, but it said that this "isn't surprising, since each year we offer more products and services, and we have a larger number of users".

In recent years observers have called for greater openness in how Google deals with content removal requests. Due to the size and reach of Google, any form of selective information removal by governments can be regarded as censorship of the web.

At the end of Google's transparency report the firm said, "We hope this tool will shine some light on the appropriate scope and authority of government requests to obtain user data around the globe." µ