Google on Monday agreed to directly report child sexual abuse material (CSAM) to the cybercrime division in India, days after a similar announcement was made by Meta amid heightened scrutiny of content dissemination by the government.

Google's decision departs from its global practice where such reports are routed to the local authorities through a US-based non-profit first.

Google spokespersons stressed the company's commitment to fight CSAM, saying, "We invest significantly to detect, deter, remove, and report child sexual abuse material. As part of our ongoing discussions with the Government of India, we have respectfully proposed to operationalise the provision of relevant information to the Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre (I4C) in cases related to child sexual abuse material."

Meta has also recently agreed to report such cases directly to the Indian side, following days of tensions between it and the government. The matter escalated into a full-blown face-off, with the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Communication and Information Technology raising the issue of a brief deletion of PM Modi's video from Facebook.

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The committee threatened to strip Meta of its safe-harbour protection. Subsequently, an apology was issued by Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg over the spread of CSAM on the company's platform.

The recent decision by two tech giants is a breakaway from the traditional process of reporting such content to the US-based National Centre for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC). The NCMEC then forwards it to law enforcement agencies in the relevant countries.

According to reports, the authorities told the companies that the existing process can lead to delays, especially in cases with an imminent danger to a child. 

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Child sexual abuse material remains a vast and ⁠growing global problem. The CyberTipline, run by that same nonprofit, received more than 21.3 million reports from around the world of suspected child sexual exploitation in 2025.