Antitrust authorities in Italy are examining Google (Italy) after publishers of news websites complained that the search titan was not giving them a fair share of revenue from online advertising.
The accusers claim that Google does not disclose criteria for ranking content on its news site. Consequently, agencies such as newspapers are unable to maximize the amount of money gained from advertising. Search engines such as Google and Bing actually do give some information regarding rankings, but do not give their entire method in order to avoid complications.
Carlo Malinconico, president of the Italian Federation of Newspaper Publishers, said “Publishers provide much of the content on the Internet, but they get nearly nothing for it….This is not fair, in our opinion. Our feeling is we lose more than we gain.” Newspapers also claim that Google Italy discriminates against sites that do not want to be associated with Google News by dropping them from the search engine completely.
According to comScore, Google controlled 68 percent of all search queries in July, a mere 76.7 billion entries. It still owns nearly 90 percent of searches in Italy. As long as Google continues to dominate the search world, similar antitrust claims will remain common. While the allegations are serious, experts don’t see the probe going far.
