Italian regulators began an investigation into Google News after Italian newspaper publishers made a claim that their content was unfairly used to generate profit for the search giant. One argument the publishers claim is that having their content circulated within Google News is a forced contribution. The newspaper say that inclusion in Google’s news service hurts readership and the ability to generate revenue.

This investigation has now expanded into Google’s primary search business.

The Italian newspaper publishers have also expressed anger over their rankings in Google’s traditional search results. Italian Federation of Newspaper Editors alleged that any organization that refused to have content displayed in Google News Italy was immediately excluded from Google’s main search.

LegitScript.com reported that 89.7% of pharmaceutical category ads on Bing’s adCenter were from illegal pharmecies. Microsoft responded stating that the number of illegal ads was far lower than reported by LegitScript but admitted to the violations.

Microsoft adCenter has taken a number of security steps since to remove the bad entries, inlcuding: manually reviewing pharma-related keywords, investigating reports of hijacked and misused landing pages, documenting the process of how the illegal advertisers use the Bing/Microsoft ad system.

Google aims to be able to track its users to within 100-200 feet of their location through new wireless networks in order to serve them with relevant advertising from local businesses. Google and EarthLink wins bid as most promising candidate for connecting San Francisco to the web without wires. In recent news, Google was served a sopeona from the Federal Government to turn in the collected data from one week’s worth of US internet searches. Google resisted the Federal Governement’s urges into Google’s data treasury. Should the sopeona have yielded the hand-over of such data, it would have established a strong prescendent for future actions. Yet, the fact that Google has access to such vital data as collected through it’s instruments such as the notorious search engine and the installable local desktop application, makes us at the Mystery Channel feel a cold chill of caution with this budding mega-venture.