Google offers plan to address Italian antitrust complaints

Internet giant Google has moved to address complaints that it has abused its dominant position and failed to share advertising revenue with Italian newspapers, Italy's antitrust regulator said Friday.

The Italian Federation of Newspaper Publishers (FIEG) accused Google Italy of obliging newspapers to allow their content to appear on the search engine's news site, where advertising generates income only for Google.

Google said in a statement it had proposed setting up a separate programme for three years during which publishers could opt out of Google News.

This would not prevent the same content from appearing when users search for it using the general Google search engine, the group said in a statement published on the website of the Italian competition authority, Antitrust.

Google also pledged more transparency in its policy for sharing advertising revenue with newspaper publishers.

Antitrust said it would finish evaluating Google's proposals by the end of September.

(c) 2010 AFP