After Twitter, Google will also now block posts/blogs from being available to users based on a country’s local laws, which is a move similar to Twitter’s country-specific censorship that sparked off an offense among various critics worldwide.
Web critics have slammed the move saying, ‘the change marks a new trend in the Internet companies bowing to the demands of authoritarian regimes’.
Google said “those contents would be visible from everywhere else in the world but would be invisible in one country.”. Further the company added that “This will allow us to continue promoting free expression while providing greater flexibility in complying with valid removal requests in local law,”.
Google spokesperson said “We believe that access to information is the foundation of a free society. Where content is illegal or breaks our terms of service we will continue to remove it,” The Daily Mail quoted.
Google’s blogging service named as Blogger was launched in 1999 and has been banned previously outright in governing regimes such as China, Syria and Iran.
Various Blogging services and social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter were important to the recent ‘Arab Spring’ revolts in countries such as Egypt, carrying messages of freedom and democracy and acting as a conduit for news.
