It seems like there is almost no end for Google and their ongoing issues with their EU antitrust settlement.  Or is there?  According to Reuters, Google is  “close to settling a three-year antitrust probe by European regulators after it offered ‘much better’ concessions” to the European Commission (EC).  But just because Google is close to wrapping up this mess now, doesn’t mean it’ll necessarily happen.  After all, Google has been here before.

Google has been through this mess twice before with two antitrust settlements that were opposed and defeated by critics and competitors of Google.  The reason for the defeat of the first two settlement proposals was that found that the core of Google’s settlement proposals would basically have little to no impact on user behavior.

A decision, according to Reuters, a decision made by EC “is expected in the net few days or in a couple of weeks at the latest.”  An issue, according to the article, is that Google’s rivals won’t be given the opportunity to give feedback.  Because of this, they will not be able to object to the settlement terms, as there may not be any “market test” this time.

More than likely this will cause a bit of a problem with all those opposed to Google.  If what the report says is true, billions of dollars in fines could be saved for Google.

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