The European Commission ordered Google on July 16 to open core parts of Android and Google Search to rival artificial intelligence services, in one of the most significant enforcement actions yet under the EU’s Digital Markets Act. The two binding rulings target what Brussels says is an unfair advantage Google’s own AI tools enjoy over competitors on its platforms.
What Google must change
Under the first ruling, competing AI assistants will get the same access to core Android functions that Google currently reserves for its own Gemini assistant, the Commission said. That means a rival assistant could be activated by voice — much like “Hey Google” — and carry out tasks such as booking a taxi, drafting a chat reply, or answering questions about a place a user recently visited, capabilities currently limited to Google’s in-house AI.
The second ruling requires Google to share anonymized search-optimization data with competing search engines, including AI chatbots with search features, at what the Commission says must be a fair, transparent price.
Timeline and safeguards
The search-data measures begin phasing in from January 2027, the Commission said, while the Android changes must ship with the next major Android release, due in July 2027. Officials described the anonymization method as developed jointly with internal and external privacy experts, in line with draft EU guidance reconciling data-protection law with platform interoperability rules.
Google pushed back the same day. In a statement, the company’s global affairs president Kent Walker argued the changes could weaken privacy and security protections for European users and risk exposing sensitive search data and trade secrets to unfamiliar companies.
The rulings add Google to a growing list of platforms facing EU-mandated interoperability duties, and follow other regulators’ own moves against its AI products: Germany recently ruled that Google’s AI Overviews and Perplexity count as publishers under media law, while San Francisco separately ordered Google and Apple to pull AI ’nudify’ apps from their stores.