[Tuna-Fish]

They are not trying to avoid fines, they want to prepare for the possibility that the company will be forced to split into multiple (truly) independent entities. When the split is done carefully beforehand, the loss to shareholders is minimized compared to a much more abrupt split done by a court of law.

[ma2rten]

If there was a split it would be inside Google, not splitting Google from other bets.

[robbiep]

Another way to look at it is now it's easy to divest some of those entities

[theduncan]

If they were going to do this, they would have pulled the advertising out of google.

This would drop what Google makes, but would also reduce what Google can be fined in the EU.

*edit, I mean the legal entity that sells the ads. DoubleClick, adsense,...

[ikeboy]

The parent links to an EU article about fines and another sibling comment said it would help protect against fines.