Google Italy is now the subject of an investigation by the country’s official corporate watchdog, due to allegations the company is discriminating against newspapers that don’t want their content linked on Google’s site.
The Italian Federation of Newspaper Publishers has written in a statement that Google is “allegedly hindering publishers in freely choosing ways of allowing use of news published on their own internet sites”.
The Italian financial police have even undertaken an inspection of the company’s offices. However, Google Italy has refused to comment on the matter directly, except saying Google News “drives significant traffic and new readers” to news sites.
Spokeswoman Simona Panseri told The Age that a “request to be excluded from Google News doesn’t imply being excluded”.
Patrick Stafford is a freelance journalist and a former deputy editor of SmartCompany.
