Google could set to pull the plug on its news service in several European countries as a bitter row over the introduction of a so-called ‘link tax’ threatens to boil over.

Brussels is bidding to levy a special tax on links in order to compensate publishers for their work when it appears on third-party platforms, a measure which could hit the search engine particularly hard.

It is believed that rather than pay a fee for linking to news stories, the internet giant may call the EU’s bluff by withdrawing its News service entirely.

Speaking to The Guardian, Richard Gingras, Google’s vice president of news, said “We can’t make a decision until we see the final language”, before adding that it was "not desirable" to close its services entirely.

Gingras added: “There’s no advertising in Google News. It is not a revenue-generating product to Google. We think it’s valuable as a service to society. We are proud to have it as part of the stable of properties that people have.”

Google has past form in this area, however, having already shut down its Spanish services in 2014 over a previous attempt by the Spanish government to charge aggregation platforms for employing links.

Traditional news publishers find themselves being stuck between a rock and a hard place with Google, relying on traffic referrals on the one hand to boost their online readership while watching helplessly as much of the advertising revenue falls out of their pockets and into Google’s.

Proposals to introduce a so called ‘link tax’ won the overwhelming support of MEPs back in September but the European Commission has come under intense lobbying from the internet giant since then to reverse course.

The UK would fall under any new legislation should it be introduced before the end of any post-Brexit transition period, potentially impacting the digital advertising market.

A spokesperson for Google said: "As Richard Gingras explained in his interview with The Guardian, there are several versions of the European copyright directive that are being discussed, and it's too early to speculate about how the final version of the directive would impact our products. We welcome the chance to work with policymakers and the industry to find a solution that benefits journalists and publishers - big and small, old and new."