Eric Schmidt, executive chairman of Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG) said the society should do everything in its power to protect children from harm. In its capacity, the search engine giant intensified its effort to make it more difficult for users to search for child sexual abuse materials online.
Schmidt wrote an article published by Daily Mail regarding Google’s initiative on the issue prior to the summit on internet safety in United Kingdom. According to him, Google and Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) have been working with law enforcement agencies for years to stop pedophiles from sharing illegal images online.
Google is active in removing images of child sexual abuse in its services and immediately reporting incidence of abuse to authorities. The search engine giant said authorities use the evidences against criminals and bring them to justice. Schmidt note that authorities rescued 386 children and arrested 348 individuals in Canada last week, which is the largest child sex investigation recorded.
Schmidt emphasized that Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG) is cleaning up and improving search to prevent that appearance of links to websites that contains child sexual abuse materials. He said Google cleaned up results for 100,000 queries that might be related to the sexual abuse of kids.
“We’re now showing warnings – from both Google and charities – at the top of our search results for more than 13,000 queries. These alerts make clear that child sexual abuse is illegal and offer advice on where to get help,” wrote Schmidt.
According to Schmidt, Microsoft deserves a lot of credit for developing and sharing its picture detection technology because it helps Google’s computers to detect illegal pictures whenever one appears on its system.
According to him, Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG) has staffs responsible in reviewing pictures because a computer is “can’t reliably distinguish between innocent pictures if kids at bath time and genuine abuse.” One a picture is determined illegal, Google assigns a unique digital fingerprint to enable its computers identify the images.
Furthermore, Schmidt said Google’s engineers developed a technology to identify videos created by pedophiles to documents their sex crimes. The search engine giant hopes to make the technology available next year and share it with other internet companies as well as with child safety organizations.
Schmidt said Google will roll out that changes in 150 languages to make a global impact, and the search engine giant welcomes the initiative of the British government in leading the fight to protect children against sexual abuse. “We hope that the technologies developed (and shared) by our industry will make a real difference in the fight against this terrible crime,” added Schmidt.
