Web behemoth that STILL won’t listen

REEKING of complacency, the head of Google’s European operations, Matt Brittin, tries desperately to downplay the scandal of advertising appearing alongside sickening hate videos on YouTube.

Issuing a token apology, he says the money Google paid to neo-Nazis and terror sympathisers amounted to ‘pennies not pounds’, the pages were viewed a ‘handful of times’ and its monitoring works ‘most of the time’. Well that’s alright then!

For Google’s former clients, who pulled ads after unwittingly sponsoring extremist material, his words will ring hollow.

So too will his defence that it is too hard to monitor the 400 hours of videos uploaded every minute. In truth, Google – which for years has shamefully ignored complaints about poisonous content – isn’t interested.

Its belated and lacklustre response is simply an attempt to protect its bottom line. And despite UK revenues of £6billion, it relies on the public to flag up hate videos instead of hiring an army of monitors.

The Mail is entirely confident that neither company bosses nor ministers will be satisfied with its response. Much-needed regulation must surely follow.

Only then, perhaps, will the message get home to arrogant, tax-avoiding Google that it urgently needs to clean up its act.