Brussels Tells Google to Let Rival AI Assistants Onto Android
The European Commission has ordered Google to give competing AI assistants the same access to Android that Gemini enjoys, and to share anonymised search data with rival search providers. The first deadlines land this August.
If you use an Android phone in Europe, the assistant built into it is Gemini, and it has always had a head start over anything you might install instead. The European Commission has now decided that head start is unfair. On July 16 it adopted two sets of binding measures under the Digital Markets Act, the EU law that sets rules for the largest tech “gatekeepers”, ordering Google to open up Android to competing AI assistants and to share parts of its search data with rival search engines.
Here is what the order actually says. Third-party AI assistants must get access to eleven groups of Android features that today are more freely available to Google’s own services. In practice that means a competing assistant should be able to do things on your behalf inside other apps: book a taxi, suggest a reply in a chat app, answer a question about a place you just visited. Access comes with conditions, including a certification process and your explicit consent. Separately, Google must share anonymised ranking, query, click and view data with eligible competing search providers on fair and non-discriminatory terms.
The timeline is unusually concrete. By the end of August 2026, Google must publish an application form and explain how competing search providers can apply. By September it must supply test datasets and template licence agreements, by November finalise the anonymised dataset, and by January 2027 submit its pricing offer. Most of the Android changes are due through Android 18 by August 1, 2027. Google pushed back the same day: Kent Walker, its president of global affairs, argued the decisions risk weakening privacy and security protections for European users. The Commission says the anonymisation method was developed with privacy experts and lines up with draft guidance on how the DMA and GDPR fit together.
Two things have made Google hard to displace in AI, and neither is the model itself. One is distribution: being the assistant that is already there when you unbox the phone. The other is data: two decades of watching what billions of people search for and click on, which no newcomer can simply buy. Brussels is going after both at once rather than fining Google after the fact. Whether it works is a genuinely open question, because “access on fair terms” turns into a long negotiation about pricing, certification and technical detail, and those negotiations are where remedies usually get diluted.
What this means for you: Nothing changes on your phone today, and the visible effects are a year out. If you are curious about AI, the thing worth remembering is that you may eventually get a real choice of assistant on Android, the way you already choose a browser. If you follow the industry more closely, watch which assistant makers actually apply for certification this autumn, because an open door nobody walks through changes nothing. A fair caveat: Google can comply narrowly, and the deadlines only tell us when paperwork is due, not when your phone gets better.
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