Google Inc. removed content from its India domains that was deemed objectionable by a New Delhi district court after a civil lawsuit against the owner of the world’s largest search engine.
The material was blocked from India search results, YouTube, Blogger and the social-networking site Orkut, said Gaurav Bhaskar, a spokesman for Google India. The content was deleted from domains .in and .co.in, while remaining accessible from other countries, Bhaskar said today. Google can’t take down content that appears on websites owned by other companies and individuals, he said.
India is stepping up scrutiny of Internet postings and mobile communications as it tries to eliminate provocative comments and curb discord between religious groups. The Hindu- majority South Asian country is home to more than 138 million Muslims, comprising about 13 percent of the world’s second- largest population.
“We believe that access to information is the foundation of a free and prosperous society,” the company said in a statement. “Where content is illegal or breaks our terms of service, we will continue to remove it.”
The statement didn’t provide details about the lawsuit or the content that was removed, and Bhaskar didn’t elaborate.
Google’s deletions are in accordance with company policy of disabling illegal content on its property to comply with local laws, Bhaskar said.
Google and Facebook Inc. are challenging a separate, criminal complaint about offensive content in the Delhi High Court. The next hearings will be Feb. 14 and 15.
The Information Technology Act of 2008 gives the government authority to order portals to block sites and requires companies to designate a point of contact for receiving those requests.
India had about 89 million people using the Web at the end of 2010, compared with more than 450 million in China, the world’s largest Internet market, according to the International Telecommunication Union in Geneva.
--Editors: Frank Longid, Douglas Wong
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