BRUSSELS – For Android users in the European Union, the default AI assistant on their phone may be about to change. The European Commission on Wednesday handed Google a pair of binding obligations under the Digital Markets Act, requiring the company to share its search data with competitors and open Android devices to rival artificial intelligence services, changes that Brussels says will finally give European consumers real alternatives to Google’s own products.
The orders, announced by Henna Virkkunen, the EU’s technology chief, as reported by Euronews, set firm deadlines that Google has until now managed to avoid. Starting in January 2027, Google must provide competing search engines access to query and click data, the lifeblood of any modern search algorithm. By July 2027, Android phones must stop defaulting to Gemini and instead let users pick whichever AI assistant they prefer.
Virkkunen framed the step as a consumer rights measure. “Thanks to these measures we hope to see emerging alternatives to Google Search and Google’s AI services, such as Gemini, and that users in the EU can enjoy greater choice of services,” she said in Brussels.
The announcement represents a significant escalation in the EU’s long-running effort to use the Digital Markets Act, a sweeping competition law that came into force in 2024, to fundamentally reshape how big technology platforms operate. Google is not the only company in Brussels’ crosshairs, but Wednesday’s orders put it directly at the center of what may become the most consequential technology regulation battle of the decade.
Google pushed back hard. Kent Walker, the company’s president of global affairs, said the obligations would “introduce unprecedented risks to user privacy, device security, and national security.” He argued that sharing search data would expose Europeans’ private searches “without adequate anonymisation of the data and without user knowledge or consent.” The company has not said whether it will challenge the new requirements in court.
That question hangs over everything. The European Commission’s formal obligations notice establishes fines of up to 10% of a company’s global annual turnover for non-compliance, a figure that, for Alphabet, Google’s parent company, would run into billions. A separate additional fine related to the DMA investigation is expected to be announced as early as next week, according to people familiar with the proceedings.
Whether those penalties will force behavioral change is a question the regulation has not yet answered. Google has faced enormous EU fines before: the Commission issued €8.2 billion in penalties between 2017 and 2019 over separate antitrust violations, and added €2.95 billion more as recently as September 2025. The company paid, made adjustments, and largely preserved the architecture of its business. The DMA was designed to be different, targeting structure rather than conduct, but its enforcement calendar is being tested for the first time at this scale.
The search data obligation is the one most likely to produce visible market effects, if Google complies. Search engines like DuckDuckGo and Bing have long argued that Google’s dominance is self-reinforcing: the more searches it processes, the better its results, which attracts more users, which generates more searches. Access to Google’s query and click data could theoretically let rivals train better algorithms and attract users they currently cannot reach. Whether any of them will actually take up the offer, and whether users would notice the improvement, remains genuinely unknown.
The AI assistant requirement on Android is a different problem. Google’s Gemini is integrated deeply into Android’s operating system, and building a functional choice architecture for AI services is technically complex in ways that differ from the browser choice screens the EU has mandated in the past. The July 2027 deadline gives Google a year to work it out. What the choice screen will look like, which AI services will qualify, and how prominently they will be offered have not been determined.
The Commission’s ruling lands at a moment when the AI competition landscape in Europe is in flux. A handful of European AI companies, including Mistral, which operates out of Paris, have positioned themselves as alternatives to US-dominated models. The data-sharing and open-platform requirements could, in principle, help them compete. The largest potential beneficiaries of open access to Google’s search data may still be US companies like Microsoft, which owns Bing, rather than European startups.
Less than two weeks ago, the Court of Justice confirmed Google’s landmark €4.1 billion Android antitrust fine, closing the book on a case rooted in past conduct. Wednesday’s obligations are forward-looking: the Commission is no longer only penalizing what Google did, it is trying to direct what Google does next.
What that means for European technology policy in the longer term is not settled. The DMA was always meant to be a structural intervention, not a fine. Structural interventions take years to produce effects, and Google’s compliance calendar leaves significant runway for legal challenges, technical complications, and regulatory negotiation. The enforcement mechanism is real. Whether it will work is a different question.
