walkman - 9:49 pm on May 11, 2011 (gmt 0)

Setting aside $500mil is by no means recognition and admittance of guilt. It's smart financial forecasting. Any responsible company would do the same.

Probably required by accounting rules for reporting it on certain quarters, since all the earnings are technically 'set aside.'

Amazing to see how Google jumped the shark. The book scanning lawsuit, allegations of harming competitors in SERPS, arbitrarily banning adwords /adsense with zero support, using SERPS to cheat webmasters out of visits, privacy violations etc etc. FTC and EU will tie their hands pretty good very soon.

Admit guilt or not if they pay $500 million you can be sure dozens of law firms will rush to sue them, so whatever they pay to the government is probably just a portion of the total bill.