Google fights EU rules to open up Android AI and Search to rivals

Back in July, the European Commission handed Google a pretty big to-do list. It wanted the company to make Android more open to rival AI assistants and separately asked it to share Google Search data with competing search providers. Google wasn’t exactly thrilled with either requirement, and now it’s taking the fight to court.

Let’s start with the Android side, because that’s probably the more interesting change for most of us. The Commission wants competing AI assistants to have deeper access to Android, rather than Google reserving some of those advantages only for Gemini. Within 12 months of the Commission’s July decision, Google must let users activate their preferred AI assistant with voice commands. So, you could potentially set something like ChatGPT as your preferred assistant on Android and summon it with your voice.

The second requirement is about Google Search. By January 2027, the Commission wants Google to give eligible rival search providers access to some of the search data it collects at scale.

Now, Google handles an enormous number of searches, giving it a huge pool of information that can help improve its search results. Smaller search providers don’t have access to nearly that much data. The EU believes giving eligible rivals access to some of this information could help them compete, particularly as AI chatbots increasingly overlap with traditional search engines.

This is also where Google’s biggest privacy concern comes in. The company’s senior director of competition, Oliver Bethell, argues that people regularly turn to Search with deeply personal questions, from medical concerns to relationship problems, and that sharing those queries without adequate safeguards could cause “irreversible harm” to users’ privacy.

For now, the Commission isn’t saying Google has violated these particular requirements. It’s essentially laying out how it believes Google needs to change Android and Search to comply with the DMA. Google clearly sees things differently, and the EU’s General Court will now consider its challenge.