The company said in a statement that the company is working with Google on the matter

Oct 9, 2012 06:45 GMT  ·  By

As part of the company’s effort to fight against software piracy, Microsoft asked Google to remove some of the links from its search results, but mistakenly included a bunch of legitimate websites in the complaint.

The Redmond-based technology company however acknowledged the error and said that it had already contacted Google to make sure all legitimate webpages would be brought back online as fast as possible.

“In August, takedown notices were erroneously sent for sites without infringing content. We quickly realized the error, and contacted Google to ask for the links to be reinstated. We’ve taken steps to ensure similar errors do not occur in the future,” a Microsoft spokesperson told us this morning.

“Microsoft remains committed to ensuring that copyright is respected online. We take reports of inaccurate DMCA notices seriously; if flagged sites do not contain links to infringing copies of our software, we will contact the service provider immediately to reinstate the search results.”

Basically, the takedown request sent by Microsoft in August concerned the most popular software across its range, including Windows 8, Office 2010 and Office 2013.

Some of the links redirected users to infringing content, the company said, but the complaint also requested the Mountain View-based search giant Google to censor websites such as Wikipedia, BBC, The Washington Post and EPA.

Some of the websites have already been restored and included back in Google’s search results, while others are still out from the results page. Google and Microsoft however are working on it, so all webpages should be back in no time.