European Publishers File New Antitrust Complaints Over Google News & Images

European newspapers, magazines and photographers are not happy with Google and how their content and images are shown in the Google search results.

IDG News reports Google was slapped with a new antitrust complaint over Google Images. EMMA wrote that newspapers and magazines are “extremely concerned by the Commission’s on-going assessment of the new set of commitments proposed by Google as part of the EU competition investigation.”

Google Image Search Complaint

The Center of the Picture Industry, CEPIC, is saying that Google uses images without the rights of the copyright holders consent, plus helps fuel online piracy. According to CEPIC members, 85 percent of images found using Google and other search engines are “unlawful copies” and 80 percent of those illegal images have been spread through these search engines.

CEPIC says this has gotten worse since Google designed image search back in January of this year. We know that webmasters that host images and photographers that show off their images have not been happy with the decline in image search traffic since the redesign. Now European publishers are going after Google with this antitrust complaint.

Google News Search Complaint

Google offered concessions with the European Union in an effort to halt a three-year probe investigation over how Google uses newspaper and magazine publishers content in search.

The publisher group said they are “extremely concerned by the Commission’s on-going assessment of the new set of commitments proposed by Google as part of the EU competition investigation.” Adding that the “new set of commitments is putting at risk the future of the European digital economy which needs fair market conditions.”

To read all the complaints currently issued from this group, see the EMMA.