Google faces new anti-trust probe

Google is accused of not adequately disclosing its news ranking process

Anti-trust authorities in Italy have opened an investigation into Google after complaints about the company's news site. Authorities have searched Google's offices in Milan as part of the case.

The investigation centres on a complaint filed against Google by the Italian Federation of Newspaper Publishers. The group claims that, by not adequately disclosing its news ranking process, publishers are not given enough information to fine tune their coverage and obtain greater advertising revenues.

Josh Cohen, senior business product manager of Google News, said in a blog post that the company is still reviewing the claim, and defended the way Google News conducts business.

"We respect the wishes of content owners, which is why we've made it easy to opt out of our services. However, when it comes to Google News, we have far more requests for inclusion than for removal," he wrote.

"We'll continue to work with all web sites and news publishers to help more people discover their content, and for those that don't want to appear in Google or Google News, we'll continue to honour those requests as we always have."