Google has vowed to appeal against a Belgian court ruling that represents the first legal blow against its controversial Google News service which has provoked the ire of European publishers.

A Brussels court told the world's most popular internet search engine to scrap links to a number of newspapers after ruling that the company had broken Belgian copyright laws by publishing their material without permission. It was told to remove stories from certain publications on its Belgian news website or face a daily fine of €1m ($1.27m).