Court: Google broke Italy's privacy laws

ROME, Feb. 24 (UPI) -- Three Google executives were convicted Wednesday of breaking Italy's privacy laws in a case Google says could undercut freedom of expression on the Internet.

Prosecutors said videos of an autistic boy being bullied by classmates in Turin violated Italian personal privacy law and were removed only after an advocacy group mentioned in the videos complained, The New York Times reported.

Tried and convicted in absentia on privacy violations were Peter Fleischer, Google's chief privacy counsel; David Drummond, senior vice president and chief legal officer; and George Reyes, a former chief financial officer at Google. The three received six-month suspended sentences.

They were cleared of defamation charges.

A Google marketing executive, Arvind Desikan, was charged with defamation and cleared.

Lawyers for the Google executives said they planned to appeal. Google said it removed the videos as quickly as possible and helped in the investigation.

The Mountain View, Calif., company painted the trial as an effort to reopen debate over how much liability Internet companies have for content posted to their sites. Google said a guilty verdict could chill development of the Internet in Italy and perhaps Europe.

Google officials also said Wednesday the search-engine giant was being investigated by European antitrust regulators after three companies complained about its market power in online search and advertising, the Times reported. The complaints to the European Commission in Brussels include one from a company tied to Google's competitor Microsoft.

In a statement posted on its corporate Web site, Google said it was cooperating.

"While we will be providing feedback and additional information on these complaints, we are confident that our business operates in the interests of users and partners, as well as in line with European competition law," the company said.