Google is the first Internet titan to make this information publicly available, and its decision to do so will put public pressure on competitors like Yahoo to follow suit. Wired quoted Google VP David Drummond, saying that the company hopes this and other steps towards greater transparency "will lead to less censorship."
The tool provides two sets of counts recorded between July 1 and December 31, 2009: one of data requests and one of removal requests. Google only shares numbers for each, not any details about specific requests. It's also important to note that the count doesn't include take down notices issued because of copyright infringement. It does include other legit requests like the removal of child pornography or the retrieval of warranted data on criminals.
So what are the numbers?
The United States made 3,580 data requests and 123 removal requests. Google complied with 80.5% of the latter. Brazil leads in both categories — 3,663 data requests and 291 removal requests. That's probably because Google's social network Orkut is hugely popular there. There are also numbers for United Kingdom, Germany, France, Japan and many other countries.
We know you're wondering about China, but no numbers were provided for that country. Google's tool says, "Chinese officials consider censorship demands as state secrets, so we cannot disclose that information at this time."
