Italian competition authorities said that they were investigating Google, following complaints from publishers that the company was abusing its dominant position on the Internet to deny them a fair share of online advertising revenue. Carlo Malinconico, president of the Italian Federation of Newspaper Publishers, said the group had complained to the antitrust authority about a "lack of transparency" in Google's search engine and Google News service, which compiles blurbs of news stories on the Web and provides links to them.