For years Google has kept the splits it gives its AdSense publishers those using Google search services on their sites. It has successfully avoided this revelation but some recent pressure from Italy has created the environment where Google pretty much has to give the info in order to help its cause.

The Wall Street Journal reports:

Google Inc. revealed how it splits advertising revenue with search and content publishers, a move made in response to calls from publishers and regulators for greater transparency.

The Internet company said in a blog post Monday that it pays publishers 68% of the revenue Google collects from advertisers for content ads that appear on the publishers’ sites. Google said it pays publishers 51% of revenue for search ads.

Every day Internet companies look more and more like traditional companies as they are forced to reveal things that were OK to keep secret because, well, that’s the Internet. Those days are long gone especially for a company the makes the amount of money and has the level of influence that Google does. It looks like people just don’t trust that Google’s ‘Do No Evil’ mantra is being applied. Ahhh, the price of history-making levels of success, right?

It looks like Google is trying to come off as more transparent and real. Good luck. Once you have gotten to Google’s size and made some of the mistakes it has made regarding privacy and other important consumer related issues, it’s probably too late to come of as appearing genuine. In this case, while Google claims the timing was right it’s really just a matter of them being pushed far enough into a corner that they had to respond to get out of it.

Some other information about AdSense and more.

The company said revenue sharing for its AdSense service hasn’t changed since it was introduced in 2003, while the company’s search-ad revenue sharing has been the same since 2005.

The company’s world-wide revenue splits were largely in line with widely circulated estimates and more generous than the 60% cut that Apple Inc. will provide to developers who use the company’s upcoming iAd mobile-ad service.

Google didn’t reveal its revenue-sharing split for YouTube because that program recently started and its terms aren’t considered stable yet.

In all honesty, I am not too sure why any company needs to reveal this kind of information. Just because everyone else has is never a very good reason to do something. As Google gets more and more flak this will probably happen in other mysterious areas of the company as well. Who knows?

Actually do we really care?