Breaking News: Google Fined $43 million in Belgium

Despite carrying the Mugshot Image of the court order on all Belgium properties including Google News and Search homepage, a Belgium court has slapped a fine of €34 Million on Google.

This heavy fine is imposed on Google because the court believes that the search company did not completey comply with the court order to remove all links to French and German-language Belgian news sources as of September 5, 2006.

According to Poynter, Google was unable to find out which domain names where covered by the court order and so could not clean up its database. Google has now asked the publishers to help identify these domains, so it can comply with the court order.

News Sources: Planet Internet, Poynter.org