Governments Googling Google about you more than ever says Google

Google has published its latest “Transparency Report”, the disclosure in which it reveals how many times governments asked it to cough data on users. And this time around there's mixed news.

In the “yikes!” column is the fact that Governments asked Google for data 40,677 times between July 1 and December 31st of 2015, and asked for data from 81,311 accounts. Also in yikes column is the fact that Google delivered data in 64 per cent of cases, up a single point compared to the previous half year.

In the “phew, perhaps” column, Google's long-term average for coughing data is on a downward trend: the company's first transparency report from 2010 saw it hand over data 76 per cent of the time. The current 64 per cent response rate is still lower than the rate at which Google coughed data until late 2012.