Google’s DMCA Transparency Report ‘Freezes’ After Recent Volume Surge
After more than a decade of timely updates, Google Search's takedown transparency report has stalled since mid-April. The absence of new data makes it harder for journalists and researchers to analyze these DMCA takedown efforts, which have increased significantly over the past year and a half. Notably, Google continues to send these notices to the Lumen database, providing some ongoing visibility.
The decision to make this information available for public scrutiny was partly triggered by a rapid increase in removal requests. This was having an impact on the “free flow of information”, according to the search engine.
While additional transparency helped to uncover serious errors and various abuses over the years, it didn’t curb the volume. On the contrary, legitimate DMCA takedown requests against search results shot up and thenn continued to grow.
Around November of last year, Google received its 10 billionth takedown request. Less than a year later, in April, this number had already increased by another 2.3 billion, or roughly 100 million takedowns per week. After that, Google’s transparency reporting updates froze.
