Page made the statement in a Time Magazine interview published in the February edition of the magazine, which also features Page, cofounder Sergey Brin and CEO Eric Schmid on the cover.
When asked how much people use Google to look for porn, Page said the amount was small.
“[It’s a] single-digit percentage,” he said. “We generally think that having more access is better, as long as you're not a child or overly offended. But we can help people do filtering if that's what they want, though there is no technology that can tell with 100 percent accuracy if an image or website is pornographic.”
Page’s statement may come as a surprise to anyone who has shifted through the myriad statistics on Internet pornography published over the last 10 years. Reports dating as far back as 1995 have claimed as much as half of the Internet is devoted to pornography, while others have said the amount is likely 5-to-10 percent.
“It’s very difficult to pin down,” Carl Menkins, a search engine consultant, told XBiz. “There have been a lot of studies done, but any kind of metrics relating to the number of pages in cyberspace [devoted to porn] is almost an impossible task to document.”
Menkins said he wasn’t surprised by Page’s statement, but admitted he would be interested in seeing the data.
“Frankly if what he said is true, I’d like them to hand the data over,” he said. “It would be fascinating to see how blown out of proportion the Internet porn issue might be.”
A hearing in which lawyers for Google will defend the company’s refusal to hand over search engine data is scheduled for March 13.