In an article in yesterday's 'Wall Street Journal', Google CEO Eric Schmidt denied the company is to blame for the news industry's problems and said it is committed to playing a role in helping struggling publishers survive the transition to the online age.

In the op-ed piece Google boss Eric Schmidt said: "With dwindling revenue and diminished resources, frustrated newspaper executives are looking for someone to blame.

“Much of their anger is currently directed at Google, whom many executives view as getting all the benefit from the business relationship without giving much in return. The facts, I believe, suggest otherwise.

“We send online news publishers a billion clicks a month from Google News and more than three billion extra visits from our other services, such as Web Search and iGoogle.

"That is 100,000 opportunities a minute to win loyal readers and generate revenue - for free,” he says.

“It's understandable to look to find someone else to blame. But as Rupert Murdoch has said, it is complacency caused by past monopolies, not technology, that has been the real threat to the news industry,” he adds.

“We recognize, however, that a crisis for news-gathering is not just a crisis for the newspaper industry,” Schmidt says.

“We also acknowledge that it has been difficult for newspapers to make money from their online content. But just as there is no single cause of the industry's current problems, there is no single solution.”

Belfast Telegraph