Google was singled out for criticism by the World Association of Newspapers, which yesterday formed a taskforce to lobby the EU to consider copyright infringement issues and to try to come up with new commercial agreements with the search engines while exploring collective action against them.
Gavin O'Reilly, WAN president, said other search engines such as Yahoo!, MSN and Ask Jeeves were more "open to constructive dialogue" than Google.
News aggregator sites carry the photographs, headlines and sometimes the introductory paragraphs of news stories from hundreds of sources, which they provide page links to.
WAN said search engines and content aggregators provide a "valuable service in terms of traffic generation but have built their business models in large part in taking content for free".
O'Reilly, who is also the chief operating officer of The Independent's owner, Independent News & Media, said: "Google, Yahoo! and other search engines are not some new breed of social benefactors of information -- they are assuredly commercial, very-much-for-profit organisations and not the new Robin Hoods.
"WAN is also extremely concerned about the behaviour of several major search engines when faced with the censorship demands of repressive regimes."
WAN represents 73 national newspaper associations, including the UK's regional newspaper body, The Newspaper Society, and national newspaper body, The Newspaper Publishers Association.
It is following the lead taken by French news agency Agence France Presse, a WAN member, which last year filed a lawsuit against Google alleging that its Google News site carries AFP photographs, news headlines and stories without permission.
Another Google initiative to publish millions of library books online also attracted a lawsuit last year from the Association of American Publishers and the Authors Guild.
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