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The ruling followed a complaint by Copiepresse, which manages copyrights for the French and German language newspapers in Belgium. The court ordered to Google to stop reproducing content from La Derniere Heure, La Libre Belgique and Le Soir or pay a fine of €1 million per day.

'We are asking for Google to pay and seek our authorisation to use our content,' said Copiepress general secretary, Margaret Boribon. 'Google sells advertising and makes money on our content.'

The newspapers' content has subsequently been removed from news.google.be.

Google said that it was disappointed by what it believes to be a flawed decision.

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Spokeswoman Rachel Whetstone said that it has always removed content when asked.

'We believe this case was entirely unnecessary,' Whetstone said. 'There is no need for legal action and all the associated costs.'

She might also have pointed out that the company does sell advertising on its news pages. Nor does it lift content wholesale, instead providing links back to the originating website.

However Luc Golvers, a computer consultant who gave evidence in court, said that Google was more than just a search engine, as cached versions of articles are stored on the Google servers.

Whetstone denied that this is the case.

'Google News does not have cached versions,' she said.

Last year Google removed content belonging to a French news agency, Agence France-Presse, after it sued alleging copyright infringement.

The agency's president, Pierre Louette, said that Google's offer to exclude content does not go far enough.

'Effectively,' he said, 'they are offering us an opt-out from appearing on Google, but this doesn't address the real problem, which is that they attach no value to the headlines, pictures and text from around the world that we spend a lot of money producing.'