Italy may charge Google executives

(Reuters) - Italian prosecutors are preparing to file charges in a 2006 case against four Google executives over a video on the Internet provider's Italian-language site, the Wall Street Journal said.

The video shows a disabled teenager taunted by peers.

Prosecutors are expected in September to request that the executives stand trial on charges of defamation and violation of privacy for allegedly failing to control the content of the site adequately, the paper cited people close to the probe as saying.

The executives targeted in the inquiry are the top legal representative and chairman of Google's Italian unit at the time, another Google Italy board member at the time, an executive responsible for Google's privacy policies in Europe, and the then-head of Google Video for Europe, the paper said.

The men were put under investigation not for their direct role in the posting of the material in question but because they had positions of authority over the operations involved, the people familiar with the probe told the paper.

An Italian advocacy group for Down syndrome, Vividown, prompted the probe in Milan when it lodged a complaint after being alerted to the video in September 2006, the paper said.

A Google spokesman said: "While we reiterate our solidarity with the boy's family and with Vividown, we firmly believe that these proceedings are not about Google Video and what happened but about the Internet as we know it - an open and free space."

"We will continue to collaborate with Milan prosecutors to show that all Googlers under investigation have no involvement in the Vividown case."

(Reporting by Ajay Kamalakaran in Bangalore; Additional reporting by Silvia Molteni in Milan; Editing by Paul Bolding)