Google’s New EU Order Adds to an 11 Billion Euro Fight

The European Commission ordered Google on July 16, 2026, to give rival AI assistants the same access to Android that its own Gemini enjoys, and to share the search data it has guarded for two decades with competing engines and chatbots. Both decisions fall under the Digital Markets Act (DMA), the EU’s 2022 law forcing dominant gatekeeper platforms to share access with rivals. They are legally binding. Neither carries a fine, at least not yet.

Google has been down this road before. Four separate EU antitrust rulings already add up to more than 11 billion euros, and Apple, watching from the sidelines, fought almost the identical battle over Siri AI earlier this year. Apple lost.

Android Opens Eleven Doors to Rival Assistants

The Android order targets a specific gap. Competing AI assistants currently get restricted access to the operating system, while Gemini, Google’s own assistant, works without those limits. The Commission says that leaves alternatives weaker on a device that 60% of EU mobile users carry in their pocket.

The fix opens eleven Android features that assistants depend on, from voice activation to the ability to act across apps on a user’s behalf. In practice, a phone owner will be able to activate their preferred AI assistant via voice, the same way “Hey Google” works today.

Once summoned, that assistant can act on tasks a user hands it, such as:

• Drafting and sending an email without opening the mail app
• Placing a food order through a linked delivery service
• Pulling a flight number out of an inbox in the middle of a phone call
• Carrying out multi-step actions across apps already installed on the phone

Which assistant handles that request is left to the phone’s owner, not to Google. That opens a path for OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Anthropic’s Claude, or Perplexity to plug into the same system-level hooks Gemini uses today, rather than compete as an ordinary app fighting for a home-screen tap.

The Price of Google’s Search Advantage

The second order forces Google to share the anonymised query, click, ranking and view signals that power its own results, the same signals it uses to refine Search itself, with competing providers. Google Search has held more than 90% of the European market for years, and the Commission argues that scale advantage cannot be matched by any rival building a dataset alone.

Google already tried offering this data once. The Commission rejected it as ineffective. The earlier version stripped out between 90% and 100% of unique queries and excluded AI chatbots outright, and it drew no meaningful uptake from anyone.

The new measures set a multi-layered anonymisation method built with privacy experts, in line with draft joint guidance the Commission is writing with the European Data Protection Board on how the DMA and EU privacy rules interact. A pricing formula and an audited access process come with it. Recipients can use the shared data to improve their own search products, not to train general-purpose AI models, and Google can screen out applicants that pose serious security or data-protection risks.

Back in April, competition chief Teresa Ribera previewed that reasoning, warning that data access should not be restricted in ways that harm competition, and that small shifts in fast-moving markets can carry an outsized effect. Henna Virkkunen, the Commission’s executive vice-president for tech sovereignty, framed the July 16 goal similarly, saying it should produce “emerging alternatives to Google Search and Google’s AI services, such as Gemini.”

Google’s caution with click-level data is not new. Its own Search Console reports that arrived without click data earlier this year showed the same instinct to keep granular search signals close, even from the webmasters whose sites depend on that visibility. Handing the same class of data to outside competitors, under a formula Brussels built rather than Google, is a far bigger reversal.

Eleven Billion Euros of Precedent

The July 16 decisions are not fines. But they land inside a fight that has produced plenty of those. Google and Brussels have been at this for what one industry count called a roughly 15-year conflict, and the running total tells its own story.

Add up the first four rows and Google’s EU antitrust bill already tops 11 billion euros, before the pending search-ranking case is even settled. That fifth case, opened in 2024 over whether Google Shopping, Flights and Hotels get better placement than rivals in search results, is a separate, older track from the specification decisions adopted this month. It is reportedly close to a decision of its own, according to Germany’s Handelsblatt, with an announcement expected before the Commission’s August recess.

Google has not accepted the premise quietly. Of the search changes Brussels has already forced through, a company spokesperson called them “the biggest downgrade in the product’s history.” Critics on the other side think fines alone miss the point. Angela Mills Wade, executive director of the European Publishers Council, said after the September adtech fine that “a fine will not fix Google’s abuse of its adtech.”

The specification decisions themselves took months to reach this point. The Commission opened proceedings on Android interoperability and search data sharing in January 2026, gathered months of stakeholder feedback on Android access that spring, and only then adopted binding versions on July 16.

Apple Already Fought This Fight and Lost

Google is not the only gatekeeper the DMA has cornered this year. Apple ran an almost identical argument over its own Siri AI rebuild, and lost it in public.

In June, Apple said it would not ship its new Siri AI in the EU alongside iOS 27 and iPadOS 27. The company had proposed something it called Trusted System Agent, an intermediary meant to let outside assistants reach the same capabilities as Siri while adding an extra layer of control. The Commission rejected every version Apple offered.

“We’re deeply disappointed that our EU users won’t have Siri AI on iPhone or iPad,” said Craig Federighi, Apple’s senior vice president of software engineering, in the company’s announcement. Apple says it has no timeline for Siri AI’s EU return.

This was not Apple’s first retreat. A year earlier, the company had already delayed AirPods Live Translation and two Maps features, citing the same law. Apple said at the time that opening those tools to outside developers without exposing user locations was an engineering problem it had not solved.

Brussels did not take the delay quietly either. A Commission spokesperson compared Apple’s request for an exemption to asking a traffic officer to overlook a speed limit, saying “the EU will not give any exemptions.” Without a change, the spokesperson argued, no assistant apart from Siri would have had an equal shot at being chosen on an iPhone.

The parallel is not exact. Apple’s fight is over iOS, not Android, and the Commission has not yet issued Apple a specification decision as detailed as Google’s. But the shape of the standoff, a gatekeeper offering a technical compromise and Brussels rejecting it outright, is the one Google now has to avoid repeating with Android 18.

What Happens if Google Doesn’t Comply?

If Google’s Android 18 rollout or its search data mechanism falls short of what the Commission specified, Brussels can open a separate non-compliance case. That carries fines of up to 10% of Alphabet’s annual worldwide revenue, a cap that on the company’s recent revenue works out near $35 billion.

Google can also appeal both decisions at the EU’s courts, an option it is highly likely to use. That does not automatically pause the underlying obligations, and history suggests the litigation could run for years regardless of the outcome.

The compliance calendar is already fixed:

1. September 2023: Brussels designates Google Search, Android, Chrome, Play, Maps, YouTube, Shopping and its ad business as gatekeeper services under the DMA.
2. March 2024: Those DMA obligations become legally binding on Google.
3. January 27, 2026: The Commission opens specification proceedings on Android interoperability and search data sharing.
4. July 16, 2026: The Commission adopts both decisions as final and binding.
5. January 2027: Google must finalize pricing and begin sharing search data with eligible providers.
6. By August 2027: Android 18 ships with the required assistant access, with the Commission pointing to user benefits arriving as soon as July 2027.

That timeline does not include the other fronts Google is fighting in Brussels at the same time, including the pending search-ranking fine and newer probes into news-publisher rankings and AI training data. Google’s Android and Search problems are converging on the same regulator, in the same year, from multiple directions at once.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does This Ruling Change Anything for iPhone Users?

No. Both decisions apply only to Android and Google Search. Apple’s iOS remains a separate, unresolved fight, and Apple has so far chosen to delay Siri AI in the EU entirely rather than open the access Brussels wants, with no launch date set.

Which Google Products Count as DMA Gatekeeper Services?

The Commission designated Google Search, Google Play, Google Maps, YouTube, the Android operating system, Google Chrome, Google Shopping and Google’s online advertising business as core platform services on September 6, 2023, which is what put all of them under the DMA’s obligations in the first place.

Can Google Appeal the July 16 Decisions?

Yes, first to the EU General Court and potentially the Court of Justice after that. The timeline can stretch for years: Google’s 2019 AdSense fine was annulled by the General Court in 2024, and the Commission’s challenge to that ruling is still pending, with an advocate general’s opinion expected around November 12, 2026.

What Other EU Cases Is Google Fighting Right Now?

Beyond the July 16 orders, Google faces a separate DMA case over search self-preferencing and Play Store steering that could bring a fine of its own before the Commission’s August recess, plus a November 2025 investigation into the alleged demotion of news publishers and a December 2025 probe into whether Google’s use of publisher content for AI products disadvantages rival developers.