Frankfurt, Germany — The US Internet search giant Google Inc. said on Monday that it faces three antitrust complaints in Germany from newspaper and magazine publishers alleging the company’s search engine services violate competition rules, and demands the company to pay for using article snippets in its Web news service and search results.
Representatives from Germany’s associations for newspaper and magazine publishers, the VDZ and BDZV, and a separate but related complaint from a Microsoft subsidiary, Ciao, and a Berlin-based online mapping company, Euro-Cities, have filed a formal complaints against Google in the German Federal Cartel Office, it has been learned.
“The competition agency has informed us of complaints from Google rivals … and we are naturally ready to explain our commercial policies and products and are sure they respect German and European legislation,” Google spokesman Kay Oberbeck said in an e-mailed statement today.
“This is a investigative exercise, and we have been asked to provide the authority with our views,” Google’s Oberbeck, said. “We are happy to explain our products and business practices, and we of course comply with German and European law.”
The Federal Cartel Office, Germany’s antitrust regulator, confirmed it has received the three complaints, and had asked Google for information but that the request “did not imply any kind of infraction,” cartel office spokesman Kay Weidner said in an interview.
Details on the exact nature of the objections have not been released, according to an article in Deutsch Welle, but the associations have previously voiced claims against Google, saying that the search mogul profits unfairly from their generated content.
The media federations complain that Google News, Google Images and Google Video have used their content without authorization, earning advertising revenues as a result.
The publishers allege that Google does not pay for “snippets” of news items it showcases on its Google News site, Oberbeck said in an interview. Belgian newspapers in 2007 won a copyright suit blocking Google from linking to their articles on Google News.
Responding to the accusations, Google has maintained its innocence. The company maintains that it helps publishers make money on the Web by directing traffic their way and by selling advertising through partnership programs. “We are happy to explain our products and business practices to the Federal Cartel Office,” Oberbeck said.
But Hans-Joachim Fuhrmann, a spokesman for the German Newspaper Publishers Association, said the Web sites of all German newspapers and magazines together made 100 million euros, or $143 million, in ad revenue, while Google generated 1.2 billion euros from search advertising in Germany.
“Google says it brings us traffic, but the problem is that Google earns billions, and we earn nothing,” Fuhrmann said.
Google acknowledged that it nets €1.2 billion for ads in Germany alone, but Oberbeck was quick to point out the company paid out €4.2 billion to publishers around the world in 2009.
Google has already been criticized in connection with its ambitious project to place a vast amount of the world’s knowledge online, while Google Street View has been accused of violating privacy laws. Other officials have also called into question the fairness of Google News rankings and said that the articles displayed therein are not properly compensated for.
In Italy, antitrust agencies have busted into Google’s offices in Milan last summer, investigating a complaint from newspaper publishers, who contended that they could not opt out of Google News and still maintain their place in Google search results. Google has denied the accusations.
Google has, in the past, bowed to a syndicate of Belgian newspapers, Copiepresse, after a similarly themed suit was launched.
Still, the recent piling of complaints are the latest in a series of potential regulatory headaches for Google in Europe, where its revenue overshadows the estimated $300 million a year it earns in China. Google has been in the spotlight in China because of its threat to pull out of the country.