The search engine Google has integrated a change in its algorithm to fight against the results displayed for child pornography. A system set up with the help of Microsoft.
In a letter published on the site Dailymail, Eric Schmidt, the executive chairman of Google, highlights the intentions of the company to strengthen its fight against pedophilia on the Internet. A statement comes just days after the arrest in Canada of nearly 400 people belonging to one of the largest networks in the world of child pornography. "If society will never be able to completely eliminate this depravity, we must do everything we can to protect children," said Eric Schmidt. "That's why companies like Google and Microsoft Web worked with the authorities for years to stop the spread of illegal images on the Internet."
The Google representative said the company has long worked on the issue, and has greatly cleaned its search results, including side images. But for three months, the process has accelerated and there are more than 200 people who are now working on this point at Google. "We tweaked Google Search to prevent links to child pornography documents appearing in our results," said Eric Schmidt. "Even if no algorithm is perfect – and Google can not prevent pedophiles to add new pictures on the Net – these changes have cleaned the results of more than 100,000 applications that could be related to the sexual abuse of Children."
Filters on results in the "images" of the search engine part, Eric Schmidt said that "Microsoft deserves a lot of credit for the development and sharing of its image detection technology." The approach is in fact made on this point by the two companies. On the video side, the YouTube team are now able to detect and remove illegal content platform.
For now, this algorithm change is effective only on the English version of Google, but the company plans to deploy it soon in 150 languages. "The impact will be truly global" assures Eric Schmidt.
