Google appeals EU orders to open Android to rival AI assistants and share search data

Google has taken the European Commission to court over two orders that would open Android to rival AI assistants and make it share search data with competitors. The appeals were filed at the EU General Court in Luxembourg at the end of September 2026; outlets date the filing 28 or 29 September. The decisions themselves stand until a court says otherwise, which makes January 2027 the first real test.

What the Commission ordered on 16 July 2026

On 16 July 2026 the Commission issued two binding specification decisions under the Digital Markets Act. Its press release is plain about the aim: competitors' AI services should "compete with Google's own AI services, such as Gemini, by having equal access to features on Google's Android devices".

The first decision concerns Android. The Commission says rival assistants currently have restricted access to key functions, which makes them less attractive to the 60 per cent of EU users who have an Android device. Users will be able to activate a preferred assistant by voice, in the way they say "Hey Google", and to let it act inside apps on their behalf, such as booking a taxi. The Commission says the measures include safeguards for privacy, device integrity and security, and that users start to benefit from July 2027. The think tank ECIPE, which is critical of the decisions, lists eleven Android features and cites 1 August 2027 for most of them and 1 August 2028 for voice activation by more than one assistant.

The second decision concerns search. Google must share anonymised ranking, query, click and view data with eligible rival search engines, on fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory terms. The Commission says AI chatbots that offer search are eligible, and that sharing starts in January 2027. It set out a multi-layered anonymisation method and lets Google assess, before sharing with a specific third party, whether doing so poses serious cyber security or data protection risks.

What Google is arguing

Google's case is about privacy and security. Oliver Bethell, its senior director for competition, is quoted by AI Weekly as saying: "We're appealing decisions that will force us to share people's private search history without sufficient anonymisation." Coverage from Brussels Morning adds that Google says the Android measures would weaken security protections in the operating system.

The Commission's answer is in its own release: the anonymisation method was developed with internal and external privacy experts, and it says its decisions "remain subject to independent judicial scrutiny". DuckDuckGo has sided with the Commission, according to AI Weekly.

What the appeal does and does not do

Two details are easy to miss. First, these are specification decisions, not fines. The Commission says they do not assess whether Google has breached the law and "do not provide for the imposition of fines". The large penalties you may have seen quoted, up to 10 per cent of global turnover, belong to non-compliance findings, which is a separate track. Second, under EU procedure an appeal does not automatically suspend a decision. Google would need to ask the court separately for interim relief, and AI Weekly reports that the January 2027 data deadline could fall before the court hears the main case. We did not find a report that such a request has been granted.

The legal bases are Article 6(7) of the Digital Markets Act on interoperability and Article 6(11) on search data. The Commission opened both specification proceedings on 27 January 2026, published its preliminary findings and proposed measures in April, and decided in July. That is under six months from opening to decision, and the appeal will take far longer.

Why this is an AI story, not only a competition one

The Android decision is the first time a regulator has tried to write a rule for how third-party assistants get to act inside apps. That is the same capability that makes autonomous agents useful and risky, and it is the subject of our report on Nvidia's open agent safety platform. A rival assistant with voice activation and in-app actions needs the same permissions Gemini has, so any weakness in how those permissions are granted becomes everyone's problem. That is the substance of Google's security argument, and it is why the Commission wrote safeguards into the decision.

ECIPE's critique, titled "regulatory privilege escalation", argues the Commission is stretching competition duties into unsettled AI markets and that the main beneficiaries will be large firms best placed to use mandated access. That is an argument, not a finding, and ECIPE is an advocacy think tank. The Commission's counter is that access to search data is what allows smaller, privacy-focused engines to exist at all.

Hype check

Google presents the orders as a privacy threat. The Commission presents them as a level playing field. Neither claim can be verified yet: the anonymisation method has not been tested at scale, and nobody has shipped a rival assistant that uses the Android features. The evidence we can check is procedural, and it is solid: the decisions exist, the dates are fixed, and the appeals are filed.

Our take

We would not bet on the appeal stopping the clock. The data-sharing deadline is close, a pause is not automatic, and Google has already been through a consultation round on the proposed measures. The real question is whether the anonymisation method holds up when real queries start moving, because one visible failure would hand Google its best argument. Watch for any interim relief request, for the first pricing formula Google publishes, and for which AI chatbot firms apply for access.