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Western Government's constantly harp on about how open they are to free speech and expression, but if that's the case why are they begging Google to take down content?

The internet giant has revealed a massive increase in the cases of country's phoning them up to ask that they remove content in the last six months.

Google received 1,000 requests from Government's worldwide to censor content which includes videos, search listings and whole sites.

Ireland was one of the few western countries which didn't bother asking Google to censor anything. Good man Enda, we wouldn't want to p*ss off the international investors.

Our Spanish friends on the other hand weren't too bothered about that old free speech guff. In the six months to December 2011 the Spaniards called Google 14 times to remove 270 search results of blogs talking about public figures.

According to the Irish Independent they also demanded the taking down of three blogs and three Youtube videos. Thankfully Google refused. But, they don't always.

In its Global Transparency Report, the company says it complied with more than half the requests it received.

Other requests included Poland asking for the removal of an article that took a stab at a development agency and Canada wanting the video of a  man p*ssing on his passport and flushing it down the toilet to be taken down. Sadly Google didn't do either.