by accepting two complaints from Germany, one involving a powerful group of newspaper and magazine publishers and the other, a mapping company, officials said on Friday.
“We appreciate that the E.C. is now investigating the case as it could be one of the most important topics for the digital press in the coming years,” the publishers said in a joint statement. “From our point of view Google is no longer a mere search engine but filling the result pages with more and more own content,” they said. “Thus Google is no longer an intermediary but direct competitor.”
Euro-Cities had complained that maps from Google Maps were being integrated on other Internet sites for free, saying the practice is destroying its business model.
More: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/18/technology/18google.html