Additionally, the first portion of "The Statement of Objections outlines that the markets for general search and comparison shopping are two separate markets. In the latter market, Google faces competition from a number of alternative providers." is something I think is widely debatable. People have comparison shopped with search results from the beginning, Google as been iterating on it steadily and this is the result.
This is interesting: "Google does not apply to its own comparison shopping service the system of penalties, which it applies to other comparison shopping services on the basis of defined parameters, and which can lead to the lowering of the rank in which they appear in Google's general search results pages." I'm not sure what system of penalties they are referring to. The only ones I know of are for blackhat SEO, and if that's what they are referring to that's an interesting argument to make. I wonder how it will go.
Google has shown before that they are very good at using extreme PR to get a benefit, while the EU surely is also influenced by local companies.
That’s how the whole thing started.
Google – with their new statement – isn’t trying to explain or answer, but to win a PR victory: Tell everyone the EU is doing some new crazy regulation, and hope the EU stops it.