Google has been told by the European Union to open two of its most valuable assets to competitors: the Android operating system and the data behind Google Search. The orders come under the EU's Digital Markets Act, a law that targets companies large enough to act as digital gatekeepers, meaning they control access to markets that other businesses depend on.
The core problem regulators identified is straightforward. Today, if you use an Android phone, Google's own AI assistant, Gemini, is woven into the phone at a system level. It responds when you hold the power button, reads what is on your screen, and takes actions across apps. ChatGPT, Claude, or any other AI assistant you download sits in a separate app. You have to open it manually. It cannot respond to voice commands or act across the phone the same way Gemini does.
The EU's ruling says that gap is not acceptable under its rules. Google must give rival AI assistants the same system-level access it gives Gemini, including voice activation, on-screen awareness, and the ability to act across apps. In plain terms: an Android user in Europe should eventually be able to set ChatGPT or Claude as their default assistant with the same capabilities Gemini has today, not a reduced version.
The second ruling targets search data. Google holds roughly 95% of the EU search market. Over decades, it has accumulated an enormous record of what people search for, which results they click, which ones they ignore, and how they refine their queries when the first result does not satisfy them. That behavioral record is a major reason Google Search keeps improving while rivals struggle to close the gap: better data produces better results, which attracts more users, which produces more data. The EU wants Google to share that data, anonymized, with rival search engines and AI services that function like search engines.
Neither change happens immediately. Google has until January 2027 to begin sharing search data and until July 2027 to implement the Android changes. Those deadlines give Google time to negotiate the technical details, and it has already signaled it will push back hard. The company's public position is that opening Android at that depth would put user privacy and security at risk.
That argument is strategically familiar. Apple made the same case when the EU pushed it on similar interoperability requirements, and declined to release an updated version of its Siri AI in Europe, explicitly citing the DMA. The EU has heard both companies make this argument and has moved forward regardless, with limits built in: Google will be able to vet which services get deeper Android access, and the search data must be anonymized before sharing.
The financial pressure behind all of this is significant. Alphabet, Google's parent, reported around $350 billion in revenue for 2025. Non-compliance with the DMA can trigger fines of up to 10% of global annual revenue, which at that scale exceeds $35 billion. Google has already absorbed a separate EU fine of $3.5 billion in 2025 for a different antitrust matter. The company's accumulated EU competition penalties now exceed $11 billion over the past decade.
For businesses outside the tech industry, the most relevant near-term question is what a more competitive search market actually means in practice. If rivals like Bing, DuckDuckGo, or AI-powered tools like Perplexity gain access to better data and eventually improve their results, the assumption that Google Search is the only channel worth optimizing for becomes less reliable. That shift, if it arrives, will be gradual. But the direction is now clearer than it has been.
The other signal worth noting is geographic spread. The UK, Japan, and South Korea are all building digital competition rules modeled closely on the EU's approach. Whatever Google is required to do in Europe tends to become a reference point for regulators elsewhere. What starts as a Brussels ruling has a history of becoming a global operating standard.
Google will comply in some form. The financial cost of outright refusal is too high. The real question is how much of the original requirement survives the technical negotiation process over the next 18 months.