EU forces Google to open Android to rival AI assistants and hand over its search data

The European Union has struck the biggest regulatory blow yet at the way artificial intelligence reaches ordinary people. In binding decisions issued on July 16 under the Digital Markets Act, the European Commission ordered Google to open the Android operating system to rival AI assistants — and to hand over anonymised search data to competitors.

What Brussels Ordered

The first decision targets the assistant itself. Google must allow competing AI services to use 11 features of Android, enabling rival assistants to perform tasks such as booking taxis and sending messaging replies through voice commands. Most strikingly, users must be able to summon a third-party AI assistant by voice — the way ‘Hey Google’ works today. The changes are expected to reach users from July 2027.

The second decision targets Google's crown jewels: search data. Google must begin sharing anonymised search data with eligible competing search engines and AI chatbots from January 2027. The Commission's reasoning is that access to this data could help rivals — including privacy-focused services — build products that can actually compete with a company that has dominated search for two decades.

Why It Matters

Android runs on billions of phones worldwide — it is the single largest distribution channel for AI on the planet. Whoever controls the default assistant on those phones controls the front door through which most of humanity will meet artificial intelligence. Until now, that door belonged to Google alone.

Brussels has effectively declared the AI assistant a regulated utility layer: on a gatekeeper's platform, rivals must be allowed to compete for the user's voice. It is the first time the EU's gatekeeper rules have been applied so squarely to the AI era's most valuable real estate.

Google's Pushback

Google reacted sharply. The company argues the decisions could expose users to serious risks, with its chief legal officer Kent Walker saying the rulings ‘risk undermining vital privacy and security guardrails’ for millions of Europeans. The company has consistently argued that deep third-party access to operating system functions widens the attack surface for abuse.

The privacy argument cuts both ways, though: critics note that the data Google is being asked to share is anonymised, and that the security framing conveniently defends a monopoly position worth hundreds of billions.

A Brutal Stretch For Google

The order caps a punishing month for the search giant. Its flagship AI model, Gemini 3.5 Pro, has reportedly missed three internal deadlines over coding performance and remains stuck in limited enterprise preview. Now its most powerful structural advantage — default control of Android — has a regulatory expiry date in Europe. The company remains formidable, valued at roughly $4.2 trillion, but its two moats — distribution and data — are both under direct attack in its second-largest market.

Three Worlds Of AI Rules

The decision also sharpens a global divergence. In the same ten days, Washington floated a FINRA-style watchdog to vet frontier AI models, Beijing launched WAICO — its own intergovernmental AI governance body with 29 founding countries — and Brussels used competition law to pry open the AI distribution layer. Three power centres, three entirely different theories of how to govern the same technology.

For the world's AI developers, Europe's version just became very concrete: from January 2027, Google's search data starts flowing to rivals, and from July 2027, an Android phone in Europe may answer — by voice — to an assistant Google didn't build.