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Tuesday, January 18, 2011

Google and Market Monopolization


Google is the biggest search engine in Europe with 90% of the market.

Apparently, while pushing hard to capture this market, Google tripped over some of the anti-trust laws in the European countries.

Google has already reached anti-trust settlements/agreements in France and Germany and is in the process of settlement with Italian publishers.

FIEG (Italian Federation of Newspaper Publishers) filed suit against Google in 2009 for market monopolization when it came to distributing online news. Prior settlements have resulted in more content control for the publishers and more transparency in ad revenues gained from publishers' sites.

Well, holy shitwowsky, I hope Google is learning its lessons finally and that the U.S. is keeping a sharp eye on this.

Here are more details reported in Monsters and Critics dot com (M&C) , a fine source for world news and current affairs:

Italian publishers, Google reach deal on online news

Italy's anti-monopoly agency formally ended a complaint against Google Monday after the company reached a deal with Italian media groups on content management and advertising revenue, reported government and business groups.

The deal, proposed by Google in response to a complaint filed by the FIEG publisher's association in 2009, will give Italian publishers more control over content used in Google's online news service and require more transparency about ad revenues linked to those news sites.

FIEG had accused Google of market monopolization when it came to distributing online news.

FIEG President Carlo Malinconico greeted the opinion, noting it was the first time Italy's AGCM competition authority had dealt with the question of Google's relation to the publishing industry.

But the deal will not be certain until legislators pass new laws to reflect the agreement.

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1 comment:

Jeanne said...

Power can so easily corrupt the big and the small....