'Tax Google, Facebook, Amazon: Mediaset

(ANSA) - Cologno Monzese, April 29 - Mediaset President Fedele Confalonieri on Wednesday called on the government to tax the international Internet giants.
    "Google, Facebook and Amazon ... don't pay tax in Italy - European countries are reacting to this, it's a wake-up call also for Italy and our government," Confalonieri said.
    Speaking to a shareholder's meeting of the media giant owned by former premier Silvio Berlusconi, Confalonieri urged Italy to "follow up the facts" by taxing social media and other foreign media companies active in the peninsula at source.
    "It is estimated, but we can only conjecture, that Google alone drains advertising resources worth one and a half billion (euros) a year, Facebook holds all the data on our youngsters and Google is able to supply the last four years of research carried out on its search engine - a giant digital tracking of information on hundreds of millions of people, the consumer orientation of all of us to sell to advertising investors," he added.
    "When the Google management says its business is not publishing it distorts the truth and interferes with the evidence - the truth is that it distributes editorial content made by others, including by us, without production costs but pocketing the advertising revenue".