Brussels acted on Thursday, and the order was sweeping. The European Commission issued two legally binding specification measures against Google under the Digital Markets Act, forcing the company to give rival AI services access to Android’s core functions and to share the search data it collects at a scale no other engine can match. The decisions, announced July 16, are the most detailed attempt yet to apply Europe’s flagship tech law to artificial intelligence.
The Android measure is aimed at Google’s own AI assistant, Gemini. Gemini is preloaded on Google-certified phones and can be woken with a voice command, and it has access to system functions, screen content and app automation that third-party assistants lack. The Commission’s decision requires Google to give competing AI assistants the same capabilities, including voice activation, reading and acting on screen content, and performing actions inside apps such as booking a taxi or drafting replies in messaging services.
The practical effect, if it holds, is that an iPhone-style assistant choice will come to Android. European users could set a rival assistant as their default, wake it with a hot word, and let it operate their apps the same way Gemini does today. The Commission estimated that about 60% of EU users carry an Android device, making the operating system the most direct route to the region’s consumers.
The search measure goes further. Google will be required to share anonymized search data with third-party search engines, and, in a twist aimed squarely at the AI economy, AI chatbots that offer search functionality will be treated as eligible recipients. The Commission said Google’s past data-sharing offers had been ineffective, and set out a multi-layered anonymization method, a formula for pricing the data and a transparent process for requesting access. Sharing must begin in January 2027; the Android changes take effect for users in July 2027.
The Commission framed the decisions as a matter of competition rather than punishment. These are specification measures, not a non-compliance investigation, which means no fines are attached, and Google retains the right to challenge them in court. The proceedings began in January, and the Commission published its preliminary proposals in April before finalizing them this week. Henna Virkkunen, the EU’s tech chief, said the goal was to let alternatives to Google Search and Gemini emerge.
Google pushed back immediately. Oliver Walker, a company vice president, said the measures “introduce unprecedented risks to user privacy, device security, and national security,” and argued that AI assistants already work on Android and that sharing search data would expose Europeans’ private searches to unfamiliar companies without adequate anonymization. A senior European official responded that the Commission took privacy and security into account in designing the data-sharing rules.
The timing compounds the pressure. Google’s own AI products, including Gemini, have been under scrutiny across Europe, and the company has spent months adjusting to the DMA’s rules on app stores, default settings and self-preferencing. Thursday’s decisions add a new layer of obligations that cut directly into how Google makes money from both search and Android.
The same day, Google lost an appeal in Italy over a fine of about 854,000 euros related to gambling advertisements, a smaller fight but another sign of the regulatory weather. The decisions came as the third in a run of European actions against technology companies this week, following measures involving Broadcom and a requirement that Apple make smartwatch batteries replaceable. The pattern, analysts said, shows Brussels shifting its enforcement focus from tariffs and corporate tax to the rules governing AI and data.
The stakes for the search business are the highest. Google’s search advertising generates the bulk of its parent company Alphabet’s revenue, and its advantage has long been defended as a function of scale: more queries mean more data, which means better results, which attracts more queries. Forcing Google to share its data, and pricing it at a level rivals can afford, attacks that loop directly. Smaller engines have argued for years that without access to query data they can never close the quality gap.
The AI dimension makes the decision more consequential than previous search rulings. Chatbots that can answer questions and summarize the web are already pulling queries away from traditional search, and the Commission’s decision explicitly treats them as search services for data-sharing purposes. That means Google’s next generation of competitors, including AI search startups and model makers, will be able to license the raw material of search from Google itself.
The companies that could benefit are watching closely. European search startups, AI labs building web-connected assistants and phone makers that want to offer their own AI features all stand to gain from the measures. So do American companies with European ambitions, which can use the EU rules as a lever in negotiations elsewhere.
None of this is final. Google is expected to appeal, the specification process can be amended as markets evolve, and the practical details of anonymization and pricing will take years to work out. But the direction is now written into law: in Europe, the infrastructure of AI, from operating systems to the data that trains models, is being treated as a resource that must be shared.
