Jan 16, 2010, 17:00 GMT
Hamburg - Newspaper and magazine publishers in Germany have filed a complaint with a competition regulator in Germany against Google, the US-based search-engine giant confirmed on Saturday.
Neither the publishers nor other online companies with similar complaints would disclose the precise grounds, but they have said in the past that they believe Google profits from their online content without offering them a fair share of its revenues from advertising.
'The Federal Cartel Office has asked us to comment,' said Google Germany spokesman Kay Oberbeck. Only then would the federal officials in Bonn decide whether to open a full inquiry.
'We are very willing to explain our products and business practices to the Cartel Office and show that we are convinced these are in line with German and European law,' Oberbeck added.
A social-networking site for shoppers, Ciao, now owned by Microsoft, has also filed a complaint.
An online maps company, Euro-Cities, filed a complaint against Google on August 27, its chief executive Hans Biermann said. He added that all the complainants had agreed with the Cartel Office not to make this public till Wednesday, January 20.
A Federal Cartel Office spokesman declined to discuss the issue.
No comment could be obtained initially from VDZ and BDZV, the two publishers' associations, though a BDZV official said in November his group wanted to know why some Google News results were ranked higher than others and was seeking a share of Google's revenues.
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