Google Relents to Belgian Court Ruling

After initially refusing to comply with a court order in Belgium to publish on its homepage the decision of a case that demanded it to stop linking to Belgian newspapers without their consent, Google has relented. The company's once-sparse .be homepage now contains the over 2000-word court order at the bottom.

The Belgian Court of First Instance ordered Google to publish the decision or face a daily fine of 500,000 euros. Google said the demand is unnecessary due to the publicity the case has already received, and appealed the request, which was denied Friday. The search engine plans to appeal the entire Google News ruling, with hearings slated to begin at the end of November.