The European Commission formally presented Alphabet (GOOG) with a series of proposed measures on Monday, detailing how the tech giant should provide AI competitors with access to core functionalities of its Android mobile operating system to comply with the EU's Digital Markets Act.
The Android ecosystem is facing structural reforms. Regulators pointed out that Alphabet currently reserves key capabilities within its Android system—such as voice activation, background operation, and deep interaction with system applications—for its own Gemini AI service. According to the latest proposal, Alphabet must provide third-party AI assistants with access that is "equally effective" as that granted to its proprietary Gemini service.
The measures proposed by the European Commission aim to ensure that competing AI services can effectively interact with applications on users' Android devices and perform tasks, such as sending emails using a user's preferred email application, ordering food, or sharing photos with friends.
The EU's antitrust chief stated in a declaration, "The measures proposed today will provide Android users with more choices for the AI services they use and integrate on their phones, including a wide range of AI services that compete with Alphabet's own AI."
Simultaneously, the European Commission had already issued preliminary findings to Alphabet in mid-April, requiring the company to provide access to search data to third-party search engines, including AI chatbots with search capabilities, under fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory conditions. The data proposed for sharing includes four main categories: ranking, query, click, and view data.
It is noteworthy that the EU has explicitly included "AI chatbots with search functionality" within the scope of beneficiaries for this data. This means that once the measures are finally approved, AI search products like OpenAI's ChatGPT and Anthropic's Claude could gain access to search user behavior data that Alphabet has accumulated over decades.
Both sets of measures are currently in a public consultation phase. The feedback period for the proposal regarding AI assistant access to the Android system will conclude on May 13, while the consultation for the search data sharing measures will end on May 1. If Alphabet is ultimately found non-compliant, it could face fines of up to 10% of its global annual turnover.
Alphabet has expressed strong opposition to the EU's intervention. A senior competition legal counsel for the company criticized the move, arguing that such intervention would strip device manufacturers of their autonomy, force access to sensitive hardware and device permissions, and undermine privacy and security protections that are vital for European users.
Analysts indicate that this regulatory action signals the EU's move to transform the Digital Markets Act from principle-based guidance into quantifiable operational details. The core objective is to redefine AI capabilities from being "downloadable applications" to becoming "contestable at the operating system level."
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