Fresh from Google, is an announcement made on its official blog that it has, keeping in mind requests from users, introduced traffic graphs for each country, showing combined traffic patterns for all of their products. These are real-time graphs that will display accurate information about traffic, with just a five-minute delay.
Here is an example taken from Google’s Transparency Report site:
In the above graph, you will see that Google services were inaccessible in Libya on Mar 3, 2011 and after that. When we chose “Libya” from the dropdown menu, we found blank space clearly depicting inactivity during that period.
Background on Google Transparency Report
For those of you who don’t know what we’re talking about, here’s a little background:
It was last year that Google came out with this idea of maximizing transparency related to their tools and services, through interactive Traffic graphs that provide information about the traffic Google services attract from around the world. One of the reasons for this is to show people how governments censor internet content and trifle free net speech, and how people in those countries have to go without the ability to browse and find the information they need.
Google revealed that China is not the only country where Internet censorship is rampant. There are other countries that fall prey to government censorship of the internet. From Germany to Turkey and Australia to Thailand, they all do it! Google proves this through their “Transparency Report.” United States is one and a few countries encourage open speech but many don’t.
What Does Google’s Traffic Map Reveal?
This traffic map is an excellent tool that reveals a huge amount of information. The map shows us the number of requests Google received from different countries; to either block or remove some content. That’s not all; it also lets us know the up-time in specific countries for certain websites owned by Google. For example, we can see that You Tube was blocked by Iran.
Australia is also considering a law that would enable blocking of websites that are related to trafficking of child porn.
The New Advanced Traffic Map
According to Google, “Starting today, you won’t have to sift through every single product graph to figure out if one or more services are inaccessible. You’ll get a snapshot up front. We’ve also added annotations for historical anomalies that we’ve seen in the traffic to our services. To see the graph for each cited incident, just click on the corresponding link.”
Google believes that providing facts, and nothing but the facts, can lead to useful discussions about the scope of policy decisions and their authority in different countries. It hopes this high level of transparency will shed some light on how the perception of “Internet value” differs from country to country, and how some countries disrupt the free flow of information. It has to be said that the new Google real-time traffic maps for transparency are not just interesting but also highly informational in nature.
