Google has recently introduced a service that monitors the global availability of its services and the requests it receives by governments who have asked for information about users or requested Google to censor or take down content. It’s not perfect – the limitations of the data collected are explained – but it makes for interesting reading and comparison. So, the UK has made 48  requests to have Google remove content/items between January and June 2010. Some of these were court orders, some not.

Unsurprisingly, there is no data from Cuba or China here. Google states that ‘Chinese officials consider censorship demands as state secrets, so we cannot disclose that information at this time’ and I would imagine that Cuba follows the same line.

However, there is data revealing data traffic to and from Google services around the world. Whenever you see an outage, Google explains, you see ‘disruptions in the free flow of information, whether it’s a government blocking information or a cable being cut. Here there is data coming from Cuba:

That’s a six month period. It suggests some particularly regular outages – obviously it’s unclear the exact reason for such interruptions. It could be technical (due to Cuba’s use of satellite technology for its connection) or it could have a more purposeful reason relating to the control of information getting onto the island.

The same six month period for the UK gives some interruptions but neither to the same scale nor the same regularity.

Not only is this an interesting attempt by Google to open up it’s acquiescence to acts of government intervention (like saying, yes, we censor information but we’ll tell you when we do it and who we do it for’), it’s also a good tool to compare the traffic to its services across different countries.