The European Commission has told Google to open Android to competing AI assistants and to hand rivals a share of the search data it collects. The measures, issued on 16 July under the Digital Markets Act, are binding specification decisions rather than guidance Google can weigh up and decline.
Two things are being fixed. The first is what a non-Google assistant is allowed to do on an Android phone. At present, according to the Commission's decision, competitors' assistants get restricted access to core operating system functions while Gemini gets the lot. Under the new rules a user must be able to choose a preferred assistant and wake it by voice, in the same way Gemini can be woken now. That assistant must also be able to act inside applications, so it can book a taxi or draft a reply in a messaging thread rather than sitting in a box of its own.
The second measure covers data. Google must share the search data it gathers to improve its own results with third-party search engines and AI chatbots, subject to anonymisation. The Commission's reasoning is that this is information only Google Search can collect at the scale it does, and that no competitor can realistically assemble an equivalent set.
The timetable
Data sharing starts in January 2027. The Android interoperability changes are due by July 2027, giving Google a full year to rework how the operating system exposes wake words, app actions, and assistant permissions. The Commission says the measures carry safeguards for user privacy, device integrity, and security, which is the ground Google has historically defended these restrictions on.
Whether a year is generous or tight depends on your view of how deeply Gemini is wired into Android. Voice activation and in-app actions are not surface features. Opening them to third parties on equal terms is closer to a plumbing job than a settings toggle.
Who actually benefits
The obvious beneficiaries are the assistant makers without a phone platform of their own. OpenAI, Anthropic, Perplexity, and Mistral all ship mobile apps that live inside the constraints Android sets for them. Being able to claim the wake word on a device someone already owns is a meaningfully different distribution position from asking them to open an app.
The search data provision may matter more in the long run, though it is harder to get excited about. Anonymised query and click data at Google's scale is the sort of asset that shapes what a search product can do, and every serious attempt at a rival has run into the fact that you cannot buy it.
The measures arrive during a poor few weeks for Google, with Gemini 3.5 Pro having now missed a third target date.
Timing is not kind here. The company is already dealing with a flagship model that has slipped its date repeatedly while competitors ship, and with growing scrutiny of how its AI answers affect traffic to publishers. A regulatory order to share the search corpus and surrender exclusive assistant privileges on its own operating system is not the week's only problem, just the most durable one.
The wider regime
This is the Digital Markets Act being used to shape AI competition directly rather than through general platform rules, and it will not be the last time. Europe's other big deadline, the AI Act's high-risk obligations, lands on 2 August, and the two regimes are starting to overlap in ways companies operating in the bloc will have to reconcile.
Google has not said whether it will challenge the measures. Specification decisions under the DMA can be appealed to the European courts, though doing so does not suspend them. For now the clock on January 2027 is running.
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