Google is used for 91 percent of online searches in Germany, giving it considerable leverage over businesses

Google has taken action in a long-standing dispute over content usage rights with several major German publishers, including Axel Springer, which prints the country's most popular news title, Bild.

The internet giant has declared that it will cease to display text summaries and thumbnail images from the newspapers' websites as long as the publishers continue to demand that Google should pay for the content it collates. The publishers counter-claim that Google infringes copyright laws by bypassing their sites' homepages, therefore depriving the companies of advertising revenue.