Google receives 1.5 million takedown requests per week

Google receives 1.5 million requests per week to remove content from the website, the Internet search engine's transparency report has revealed.

Under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), copyright holders have the right to demand that websites take down links, which point to content infringing their rights.

During the last four weeks, the number of such takedown requests sent to the search engine has doubled to almost 1.5 million URLs per week, the Telegraph reports.


Google said that it fielded requests from rights holders and anti-piracy bodies to remove 5.7 million URLs from its search results.

According to the paper, this time last year, weekly URL takedown requests were at 131,577, compared to the 1.5 million now received by the firm.

The number of requests made by the American government at the end of last year grew by 37%, from 4,601 in 2010, to 5,950, the report said.