Google Investigated By Italian Regulators For Advertising Share

Following complaints that Google has unfairly used its dominant market share to deny publishers a fair share of advertising revenue, Italian authorities have begun an investigation into the search giant. Anti-trust concerns will drive the investigation into two Google services: Google’s search engine and Google News service based on a "lack of transparency".

“Publishers provide much of the content on the Internet, but they get nearly nothing for it” stated Carlo Malinconico, president of the Italian Federation of Newspaper Publishers. (NYTIMES - AUG 2009)

Copiepresse, a Belgium newspaper company, set a precedent for legal action against Google after winning a case which restricted Google from including its content within the company's news service.