Google Publishes First Transparency Report Under New IT Rules

Google revealed that it has received 27,762 complaints related to third-party content from users in India in April.

Google revealed that it has received 27,762 complaints related to third-party content from users in India in the month of April.

(Image Courtesy: Google)

Search giant Google has published its first transparency report in accordance with the new Information Technology (IT) Rules 2021.

In the report Google revealed that it has received 27,762 complaints related to third-party content from users in India in the month of April.

Meanwhile, the tech giant also said that it has taken 59,350 removal actions in total.

Google says that it removed content which violated its community guidelines, product policies, or local legal requirement.

The new IT rules require social media intermediaries such as Facebook, google, Instagram to produce a monthly transparency report on the actions it took on complaints.

Google says that 96 percent of its complaints dealt with copyright issues (26,707), while 1.3 percent dealt with trademark (357).

Other reasons cited for complaints were defamation requests (275) , counterfeit were 0.4 percent (114 ) and circumvention were 0.1 percent (37).

What Was Removed?

According to Google, 'some requests alleged infringement of intellectual property rights, while others claim violation of local laws prohibiting types of content on grounds such as defamation'.

From the removed content, almost 98 percent of it was with regard to copyright: 58,391, the report said.

Other categories included trademark: Circumvention, Counterfeit, Defamation, and Other Legal complaints.

The 'removal actions' number represents the number of items where a piece of content was removed or restricted during the one-month reporting period as a result of a specific complaint.

Google said they reviewed all complaints carefully. “We have a long history of providing transparency into the different types of requests we receive from around the world, and how we respond. All of these requests are tracked and included in our existing Transparency Report since 2010,” a Google spokesperson said.

“This is the first time we will publish a monthly transparency report in accordance with the new IT Rules, and will continue to publish more details as we refine our reporting processes for India,” the spokesperson further added.