14 DAY TRIAL // It's no surprise to anyone, but a band of publishers, competitors, and groups are amassing in force to reject Google's proposals to the European Commission regarding perceived monopolistic tendencies.
Google has come up with a list of remedies which it believes should answer all of the EC's concerns. Among them is better labeling of its services when they are included in search results, and better representation of competitors.
But, quite obviously, this wasn't enough for the Microsoft-led Fairsearch coalition or the band of dying publishers rightly blaming the Internet for their slide into irrelevance.
They all waited until the last few days when they could voice their opposition, but they're not holding back now. Quite unsurprisingly, they believe Google's proposed measures are no good and that the company needs to completely rethink its proposal.
It's unclear what the search giant could do to satisfy these groups. It doesn't really look like they actually want something apart from Google suddenly disappearing so they could go back to the "good old days," which never actually existed in most cases.
But, as is almost always the case with zealots, these groups may be overplaying their hand. While the European Commission isn't a friend of the Mountain View-based company, it will eventually stop listening to the criticism if it sees that no consensus is to be had.
Likewise, Google would much rather prefer to settle the matter and move on than go to court. But if it believes the requests are unreasonable, it will fight the EC and may eventually win, even in Europe.
Even if it loses, a court may actually force it to do less than it's willing to do on its own. Of course, if the scope of the criticism isn't to foster better competition but just to badger Google, then perhaps it's all going according to plan.