And so the fuse is lit..
.. under a large par of Google's EU business.
Honestly, if Google management thinks it can just waltz over EU legislation (again) they really need to stop smoking crack. By going ahead they create two situations that are Very Bad News (tm):
a - they create the (justified) impression they really don't care one flying banana about privacy, and think they can just pretend to be in the US. Net consequence: a VERY pissed of set of regulators (one per country, and the group in the EU trying to hold it together) who will be hell bent on dragging the morons into court instead of being nice and engaging in dialogue. Google could have prevented this from happening, but it decided to go all-out American. Well, duh if they get into trouble - it's almost like they are begging for it. Do no evil, yeah, right..
b - they will put things in place they will have to roll back later, which is going to be a lot more expensive that doing it right in the first place. Not exactly smart either.
There is really no need to feel sort for Google if they get hit over the head again, they've been asking for it. Maybe they got overconfident after they managed to successfully move the Streetview WiFi snooping to all Android equipped handsets without anyone complaining?