Google delisted 1.75 billion websites because of copyright takedown requests

Google wants you to explore the magical world of copyright takedown requests by offering new data if you want to jump in.

A new Google site prominently lists how many URLs Google has removed — 1.75 billion so far. Previously reporters had to compile such data themeselves.

You can also browse how few requests were actually denied. Around 40 million takedown requests were rejected, which is 2.1 percent of the total requests. Another 16 million requests were duplicates.

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These numbers are astronomical. It’s staggering how many requests Google has to process, and every request faces a four-step process:

1. Copyright owners send takedown notices for “allegedly infringing material”
2. Google reviews the request, and complies if there aren’t issues with it.
3. Google sends a notification to the owner of the de-listed content. The owner can file a counter-notification, either by making an argument or removing the offending content.
4. Google decides whether or not to add the page in question back to search results.

Play around with the tool now; this isn’t a new feature, but it’s fascinating.

You can, for example, see how many requests a given company has made. RIAA-member companies requested over 80 million URLs removed. You can also see how many requests companies have made for particular domains. ThePirateBay.se has faced over 4 million such requests, and that’s just in the short time the infamous pirate site used that particular domain name.