[jefftk]

It's very rare for corporations to do things as clearly illegal as robbing banks would be. Instead, this sort of dispute with regulators is typically around borderline activities. Since the final word on what is allowed or not in any given situation belongs to the regulator, it's common for companies to propose various solutions to see if a regulator would find them sufficient.

(Disclosure: I used to work for Google, in the part that this is talking about separating)