Internet search results linked to child abuse are to be blocked across the world in a stunning U-turn by Google.
The world’s biggest media firm has agreed to introduce changes which will prevent depraved images and videos from appearing for more than 100,000 different searches.
The company’s chairman Eric Schmidt, writing in today’s Daily Mail ahead of a Downing Street summit on internet pornography, says: ‘We’ve listened.
‘We’ve fine-tuned Google Search to prevent links to child sexual abuse material from appearing in our results.’
The restrictions, which have been designed to apply in English-speaking countries, will be expanded to cover the rest of the world and 158 other languages in the next six months.
Mr Schmidt also reveals that Google has developed breakthrough technology that will allow illegal videos to be ‘tagged’ so that all duplicate copies can be removed across the internet.
Microsoft, which operates search engines Bing and powers Yahoo, will confirm at the Downing Street talks that it is introducing similar restrictions. The dramatic developments follow the Daily Mail’s concerted fight to force the industry to clean up the internet with its Block Online Porn campaign.
David Cameron, in an interview with this newspaper, said the move represented ‘a really significant step forward’ but was not enough – and threatened legislation if the firms refuse to do more.
‘We learnt from cases like the murder of Tia Sharp and April Jones that people will often start accessing extreme material via a simple search in one of the mainstream search engines,’ the Prime Minister said.
Mr Cameron said a list of terms had been drawn up by child protection experts which they judged were ‘unambiguous’.
‘If you used these you were looking for child abuse images online,’ he added. ‘I challenged the search companies to block these terms, to make sure that no illegal content or pathways to illegal content were returned.
‘At the time, Google and Microsoft – who cover 95 per cent of the market – said blocking search results couldn’t be done, that it shouldn’t be done.
‘They argued that it was against the very principle of the internet and search engines to block material, even if there was no doubt that some of the search terms being used by paedophiles were abhorrent in a modern society.
‘I did not accept that then and I do not accept that now.’
Mr Cameron said the moves being announced by Google and Microsoft represent ‘significant progress’.
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‘The internet search engines will set out how they will take action to stop child abuse material from being available through a simple search online. They’re going to be doing this not only in Britain but across the world,’ he said.
