Google to start removing over 1 million pirate links per day

Google broke a new record by processing an average of one million removal requests every day. This milestone marks an escalation in the fight against piracy, as copyright owners flood Google with Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) takedown notices, reportings hundreds of thousands of inappropriate or allegedly infringing search results.

The substantial increase in DMCA requests reflects the technological advancements of our era. A few years back, Google received only a handful of takedown notices throughout the year, but today, it copes with countless allegedly infringing URLs every week.

The growth of reported URLs has shown an upward trend over the past months. Last week, Google faced over 7.8 million removal requests, representing a startling 10% increase from the previous week’s record. This request influx signifies an astonishing increase over the past three years.

Providing a better understanding of the quantity, Google currently deals with a request for infringing search result deletion every 8 milliseconds, as opposed to one request per six days in 2008.

Nevertheless, the massive surge in removal requests hasn’t been free of controversy. Reports suggest that some notices reference pages without any copyrighted material in some instances, but these pages nevertheless get removed. While Google tries to capture these errors, thorough manual review of all URLs isn’t possible, leading to occasional undesired removals.

Google released a report last year outlining the different anti-piracy measures it uses. Even so, some groups believe that the tech giant can do much more to address copyright safeguarding.

For entities like the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), this surge in takedown requests only emphasizes the inefficiency of the process. The RIAA suggests that Google could further curb illegal downloads by banning certain domains from its search results.

While Google, copyright holders, internet service providers, and other parties seem motivated to improve the process, the number of removal requests is projected to continually rise with the foresight of 10 million links per week being the next upcoming landmark.

source: ERNESTO/ torrentfreak

This article was updated in 2025 to reflect current trends and insights.