Google complied with fewer than half of the 19 content take-down requests it received from Australian authorities in the first half of the year, a transparency report reveals.
The company received five court orders and 14 requests from from police and other government agencies, complying with eight.
Authorities asked Google to remove a variety of content including violent, defamatory and pornographic videos, blog posts and Google search results.
Other requests involved trademark and copyright disputes, as well as content believed to threaten security and privacy.
With eight take-down requests, YouTube was the main target, followed by Google's blogging platform, Blogger, with five.
The report, released online on Friday, does not detail the content identified in the requests, and a local Google representative could not provide any additional information.
The California-headquarted company says in the report that it refuses to comply with requests for a number of reasons.
Some requests are too vague and omit URL addresses, while others are informal, unenforceable letters from government agencies.
The data does not include content Google removes daily in response to user complaints.
The report is the eighth Google has released detailing government content removal requests in half-yearly increments.
The number of requests by Australian authorities has been steady, but Google's compliance has generally trended downwards since a high of 93 per cent in the first half of 2010.
It dropped to a low of 15 per cent in the first half of 2012.
Globally, the number of requests jumped 68 per cent compared with the second half of 2012, led by big increases in politically-motivated requests, particularly from Turkey and Russia, Google said.
"Judges have asked us to remove information that's critical of them, police departments want us to take down videos or blogs that shine a light on their conduct, and local institutions like town councils don't want people to be able to find information about their decision-making processes," said Susan Infantino, Google's legal director, in a blog post.
She said officials "often cite defamation, privacy and even copyright laws in attempts to remove political speech from our services."
Overall, the company received 3,846 government requests to remove 24,737 pieces of content.
