The Google Transparency Report consists of five parts:
- Government requests to remove content
A list of the number of requests we receive from governments to review or remove content from Google products.
- Requests for information about our users
A list of the number of requests we received from governments to hand over user data and account information.
- Requests by copyright owners to remove search results
Detailed information on requests by copyright owners or their representatives to remove web pages from Google search results.
- Google product traffic
The real-time availability of Google products around the world, historic traffic patterns since 2008, and a historic archive of disruptions to Google products.
- Safe Browsing
Statistics on how many malware and phishing websites we detect per week, how many users we warn, and which networks around the world host malware sites.
I pointed out the visualizations of the copyright holder data earlier today.
There are a number of visualizations of the Google Transparency Report and I may assemble some of the more interesting ones for your viewing pleasure.
You certainly should download the data sets and/or view them as Google Docs Spreadsheets.
I say that because while Google is more “transparent” than the current White House, it’s not all that transparent at all.
Take the government take down requests for example.
According to the raw data file, the United States has made five (5) requests on the basis of national security, four (4) of which were for YouTube videos and one (1) was for one web search result.
Really?
And for no government request, is there sufficient information to identify the information that any government sought to conceal.
Google may have qualms about information governments want to conceal but that sounds like a marketing opportunity to me. (Being mindful of your availability to such governments.)