(CNN) -- Western governments, including the United States, appear to be stepping up efforts to censor Internet search results and YouTube videos, according to a "transparency report" released by Google. "It's alarming not only because free expression is at risk, but because some of these requests come from countries you might not suspect -- Western democracies not typically associated with censorship," Dorothy Chou, a senior policy analyst at Google, wrote in a blog post on Sunday night. "For example, in the second half of last year, Spanish regulators asked us to remove 270 search results that linked to blogs and articles in newspapers referencing individuals and public figures, including mayors and public prosecutors. In Poland, we received a request from a public institution to remove links to a site that criticized it. We didn't comply with either of these requests."
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Google says government requests to remove Web content are way up
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In last half of 2011, U.S. agencies asked Google to remove 6,192 pieces of content
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That's up 718% compared with the previous six-month period
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Google released its biannual transparency report Sunday night
Those requests for information about @placeholder users come as part of criminal investigations, Google says, and are not unique to the company.