Google and its subsidiary companies, such as YouTube, have removed or omitted information from its services in order to comply with company policies, legal demands, and government censorship laws.
Numerous governments have asked Google to censor content. In 2012, Google ruled in favor of more than half the requests they received via court orders and phone calls. This did not include China or Iran, who completely blocked the site or one of its subsidiary companies.
As of 2025, Google continues to receive hundreds of thousands of removal requests annually from governments worldwide, most commonly related to national security, copyright, or defamation, and regularly reviews each request for compliance with its policies.
Google AdSense
In February 2003, Google stopped showing advertisements from Oceana, a non-profit organization protesting against a major cruise ship operation's sewage treatment practices. Google, citing its editorial policy, stated that "Google does not accept advertising if the ad or site advocates against other individuals, groups, or organizations."
In April 2008, Google refused to run ads for a UK Christian group opposed to abortion, explaining that "At this time, Google policy does not permit the advertisement of websites that contain 'abortion and religion'".
In April 2014, Google removed ads for certain crisis pregnancy centers following an investigation by NARAL. Research across 70 U.S. cities found that, among "abortion clinic" search results, 79% of the Google ads reviewed violated its policy against deceptive advertising. According to NARAL, people using Google to search for abortion clinics were shown advertisements for anti-abortion crisis pregnancy centers. Google stated that it constantly reviews ads for policy violations and, if found, takes appropriate actions, including disabling or blacklisting accounts, as quickly as possible.
In September 2018, Google removed a paid advertisement from YouTube made by supporters of Russian opposition who urged Russians to participate in a protest set on September 9. Russia's Central Election Commission earlier sent a request to Google to remove the advertisement, saying it violated election laws that call for a "day of silence" on election matters ahead of voting, but the advertisement was blocked even in regions with no voting set on September 9 and in regions where authorities had authorized the pension-reform protests.
Google Lens
Google states that Google Lens identifies and filters sexually explicit results in order to make its results "relevant, helpful and safe", using Google-wide standards including its SafeSearch guidelines. Lens can otherwise be used for reverse image searches, with results potentially including similar images and websites containing the same or a similar image.
Google Maps
In March 2007, the lower-resolution satellite imagery on Google Maps showing post-Hurricane Katrina damage in Louisiana, US, was allegedly replaced with higher resolution images from before the storm. Google's official blog post in April revealed that the imagery was still available in KML format on Google Earth or Google Maps.
In March 2008, Google removed Street View and 360° images of military bases per the Pentagon's request.
To protect the privacy and anonymity of individuals, Google selectively blurred photographs containing car license number plates and faces in Google Street View. Users may request further blurring of images that feature them, their family, their car, or their home. Users can also request the removal of images that feature what Google terms "inappropriate content," which falls under their categories of intellectual property violations; sexually explicit content; illegal, dangerous, or violent content; child endangerment; hate speech; harassment and threats; and personal or confidential information."Image Acceptance & Privacy Policies", Goggle Inc. Retrieved 2014–07–4. In some countries (e.g. Germany), Google modifies images of specific buildings."German foreign minister joins criticism of Google's mapping program" , Catherine Bolsover, Deutsche Welle, August 14, 2010. Retrieved August 12, 2014. In the United States, Google Street View adjusts or omits certain images deemed of interest to national security by the federal government.
In South Korea, Google Maps historically lacked functions available in most other countries, including full turn-by-turn navigation, because the South Korean government restricted the export of high-precision geographic data to Google's (and similar companies) overseas servers on national-security grounds. Google already licensed domestic mapping data but could not process it through its global server network, while South Korean mapping services such as Naver and Kakao could use the data on domestic servers. In February 2026, the South Korean government conditionally approved Google's export of 1:5,000-scale mapping data, subject to security requirements including masking sensitive facilities, restrictions on displaying precise coordinates, and domestic processing of the original data.
Google Search
In the United States, Google commonly filters search results to comply with Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA)-related legal complaints."Keyword: Google and the DMCA" , Chilling Effects Clearinghouse
In the United Kingdom, it was reported that Google had "delisted" Inquisition 21, a website that claims to challenge moral authoritarian and sexually absolutist ideas in the United Kingdom. Google later released a press statement suggesting Inquisition 21 had attempted to manipulate search results. In Germany and France, a study reported that approximately 113 white nationalist, Nazi, antisemitic, Islamic extremist, and other similar websites had been removed from the German and French versions of Google.Zittrain, Jonathan; Edelman, Benjamin. "Localized Google search result exclusions: Statement of issues and call for data ." Harvard Law School: Berkman Center for Internet & Society. October 22, 2002. Google has complied with these laws by not including sites containing such material in its search results. However, Google does list the number of excluded results at the bottom of the search result page and links to Lumen (formerly, Chilling Effects) for an explanation.
Lolicon content
, Google censors "lolicon", a Japanese term meaning "attractive young girls", on its search results, hiding results regarding lolicon material, even if the user types words along with the term which would typically lead to explicit content results; the terms "loli" and "lolita" also suffer from censorship in regards to this content.
Removal of SafeSearch options
Google SafeSearch was first introduced in 1999 as a tool to help users filter out explicit content such as pornography or violence from search results. Some users have stated that SafeSearch's lack of a completely unfiltered option amounts to censorship by Google. A Google spokesperson disagreed, saying that Google is "not censoring any adult content," but "want to show users exactly what they are looking for—but [Google policies] aim not to show sexually-explicit results unless a user is specifically searching for them".
Online pharmacies Following a settlement with the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) ending Google Adwords' advertising of Canadian pharmacies that permitted Americans to access cheaper prescriptions, Google agreed to several compliances and reporting measures to limit the visibility of "rogue pharmacies". Google and other members of the Center for Safe Internet Pharmacies are collaborating to remove illegal pharmacies from search results and participating in "Operation Pangea" with the FDA and Interpol.
Search suggestions
In January 2010, Google was reported to have stopped providing automatic suggestions for any search beginning with the term "Islam is", while it continued to do so for other major religions. According to Wired.com, a Google spokesperson stated, "This is a bug and we're working to fix it as quickly as we can." Suggestions for "Islam is" were available later that month. Nonetheless, Google continues to filter certain words from autocomplete suggestions,"Sex, Violence, and Autocomplete Algorithms: What words do Bing and Google censor from their suggestions?" , Nicholas Diakopoulos, Future Tense (Slate), August 2, 2013. Retrieved December 3, 2013. describing them as "potentially inappropriate"."Google Instant doesn't work" , Google Search Help. Retrieved December 3, 2013.
The publication 2600: The Hacker Quarterly has compiled a list of words that are restricted by Google Instant. These are terms that the company's Instant Search feature will not search. Most terms are often vulgar and derogatory in nature, but some apparently irrelevant searches including "Myleak" are removed.
, Google's Autocomplete feature would not complete certain words such as "BitTorrent," "Torrent," "uTorrent," "Megaupload," and "Rapidshare", and Google actively censored search terms or phrases that its algorithm considered likely constituting spam or intending to manipulate search results."Google Starts Censoring BitTorrent, RapidShare and More" , Torrent Freak, January 26, 2011
In September 2012, multiple sources reported that Google had removed "bisexual" from its list of blacklisted terms for Instant Search."Google Removes 'Bisexual' From Its List of Dirty Words" , Michelle Garcia, Advocate.com, September 11, 2012. Retrieved March 14, 2014.
In December 2022, Google was reported to have stopped providing automatic suggestions for any search with the term "protests in China", while it continued to do so for other countries.
Ungoogleable In 2013, the Language Council of Sweden included the Swedish version of the word ungoogleable (ogooglebar) in its list of new words. It had "defined the term as something that cannot be found with any search engine". Google objected to this definition, wanting it to only refer to Google searches, and the Council removed it in order to avoid a legal confrontation, and accused Google of trying to "control the Swedish language".
Leaked celebrity content
On 31 August 2014, almost 200 private pictures of various celebrities containing nudity and explicit content were made public on certain websites. Google removed most search results that linked users directly to such content shortly after.
COVID-19 pandemic-related content An Australian study found Google search results relating to COVID-19 were heavily curated, with no indication given to users that such curation was happening. Google removed autocomplete suggestions for searches related to the COVID-19 lab leak theory.
International
Australia In January 2010, Google Australia removed links to satirical website Encyclopedia Dramatica's "Aboriginal" article, citing it as a violation of Australia's Racial Discrimination Act.. After the website's domain change in 2011, the article resurfaced in Google Australia's search results.
Canada
On 13 June 2014, the Supreme Court of British Columbia ordered Google to globally de-index websites operated by Datalink Technologies. The dispute began when Equustek Solutions sued its distributor, Datalink, for stealing technological designs, product blueprints, and using deceptive marketing to sell counterfeit network devices online. Datalink subsequently ignored initial court orders, shut down its physical operations, and fled the jurisdiction to operate anonymously online. Google voluntarily removed 345 specific links from its Canadian domain (google.ca), but Datalink bypassed this by generating new web pages, rendering localized suppression ineffective. Google resisted a worldwide ban, arguing it would overextend Canadian legal reach; however, the court rejected these arguments and granted Google 14 days to comply globally.