Is Google now a massive multi-billion dollar prude? It could well be, with the tech giant announcing that it is banning publicly viewable sexually explicit material and graphic nudity on its blogging service Blogger.

The company started to inform users Monday of the forthcoming change, and also posted a notice on its support pages explaining what was changing.

“Starting March 23, 2015, you won’t be able to publicly share images and video that are sexually explicit or show graphic nudity on Blogger” the statement reads, before noting that “we’ll still allow nudity if the content offers a substantial public benefit, for example in artistic, educational, documentary, or scientific contexts.”

The key part in the announcement is that they will no longer be able to be publicly shared; instead of simply banning explicit material outright, Google is simply making it unavailable to be viewed by others, unless the user invites someone to view it via sharing it, presumably while the other party is also logged into Blogger.

Users are advised that if they wish their blog to remain public they must remove all sexually explicit material by March 23rd, or alternatively mark their blog as private. Users who wish to take their blog down altogether can export the content via Google Takeout or XML.

Google prudes?

Google made no statement at all as to why it is making this significant policy change. Porn has been a part of Blogger since before it was acquired by Google in 2003. They did crack down on people monetizing adult content on Blogger back in 2013, but at the time that seemed more of Google acting to stop people using its servers to make money from porn.

Today’s move can only be seemingly based on some sort of newfound moral position, although clearly one of Google’s morals here isn’t to support the free speech of its users. Has the company been taken over by prudes? is this some bizarre attempt to make the company look more pious among the religious right perhaps?

What ever the reason there will be one company cheering the decision, and that’s Yahoo Inc. Their Tumblr blogging platform, that’s quite happy with adult content, is just about to receive a fairly significant membership boost.

photo credit: Pornography DESTOYS ALL PEOPLE via photopin (license)