As you become powerful its inevitable to cross limit of your
expansion and start to interfere with things that might led you into trouble. I
remember one time I was sitting with my friend from Ivory Coast he was a son of
Ivorian war lord. Actually we were having fun with Google Earth and he
suggested zooming his father’s army base from above using Google earth. That
was the first time I realize the power of the Google tools and the effect they
might bring to our daily life activities. If a normal person can have access of
a clear satellite footage of the army base what about geeks and computer
criminals, we always pray the don’t abuse the application.
Google recently has been asked to take down some of its
content wither it’s in YouTube or the search engine some government have been
directly approaching them to remove these contents online. The government of United States of America is
among the governments which made these directly request to Google to remove
some of the contents affecting their daily activities. Of the 279 removal
requests the U.S government made last year, Google complied with 49% of them.
Some other countries including Brazil, Canada, Thailand and
Pakistan have done the same according to the reports. It is believed that
Brazil made the most requests with almost 418 requests of contents removal with
Google complied with 61% of them and reject others.
Canada wanted a video of someone urinating at their passport
taken down the request was denied while Thailand wanted videos deemed to
insulting the monarchy and members of the royal family to be removed, Google
decided to restrict some of them.
Pakistan also requested Google to remove videos satirizing
the army but their request was denied. First time requester for the content
removal Bolivia, Czech Republic, Jordan and Ukraine, there is a lot of
questions that remains on the future of this battle between contents right for
Google and that’s which belongs to the governments and authority. Although not
yet reports for Africa but future has a lot to offer let’s wait and see.