Brussels (Belgium) (AFP) – The European Union demanded Thursday that Google share data with other search engines and open up its Android system to rival AI services, but the US giant said the measures would put privacy at risk. The move is the latest by Brussels against the behemoth as it seeks to flex its muscles over Big Tech.
The order was made under the EU’s flagship Digital Markets Act (DMA), which forces the world’s biggest tech firms to open to competition in a bid to give users more choice. The DMA is the bete noire of US President Donald Trump’s administration, which accuses Brussels of unfairly targeting American companies. Brussels said Google must start sharing search data from January 2027 and users would start benefiting from the changes to Android from July 2027.
“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,” EU tech chief Henna Virkkunen said. For example, the EU said Android phone users should be able to use their preferred AI chatbot via voice commands, similar to the “Hey Google” command.
The EU said sharing search data would “rebalance the playing field,” but Google pushed back, saying the measures “introduce unprecedented risks to user privacy, device security, and national security.” But Google’s head of global affairs, Kent Walker, said the EU moves risked “undermining vital privacy and security guardrails for millions of Europeans.” He explained that AI assistants already could access Android and that by sharing search data, “Europeans’ private searches would be exposed to unfamiliar companies, without adequate anonymisation of the data and without user knowledge or consent.”
A senior European official insisted the EU “took integrity, security, and privacy into utmost account,” and Brussels said the decision would ensure anonymisation of search data. The demand is legally binding as part of a procedure launched in January, but it is not a formal probe that could lead to fines.
The scrutiny of Google does not end there, however. The EU could hit Google with a fine next week in a separate investigation under the DMA law, sources close to the matter told AFP, confirming a report in the Financial Times newspaper on Wednesday. The EU has the right to slap fines of up to 10 percent of a company’s total global turnover for violating the DMA.
Fines are nothing new for Google. The EU hit the company with fines worth a total of 8.2 billion euros between 2017 and 2019 under different competition rules. And in September last year, Brussels imposed a 2.95 billion euro fine in a separate antitrust case.
© 2024 AFP
