> There is absolutely no excuse for a company—particularly one that has made commitments to free expression by being a founding member of the Global Network Initiative—to regulate speech beyond that which is required.

Absolutely is a big word. Here is a technical excuse: the search index is collected and classified by algorithms. The algorithms are not perfect in their classification, and so there has to be a margin for error.

> Neither Egypt nor Lebanon, for example, block most sexual content or require intermediaries to do so.

See, weasel word: most. So they do block some sexual content? If you want a fine-grained filter to just block that particular sexual content, you have to improve the robots. That costs time and money, and creates risk. Maybe it's easier and legally safer to just block all sexual content and be done with it. In other words, over-zealous filtering, or at least some of it, could be the consequence of cool pragmatism and nothing more deeply sinister.