The European Union has ordered Google to give competitors more access to Android and Google Search, a move that targets two of the company’s most powerful distribution channels: the mobile operating system that reaches Android users and the search engine that feeds much of Google’s consumer AI strategy.
The bloc issued two decisions on Thursday requiring Google to comply with its digital antitrust rules. Under the orders, Google must begin sharing search data by January 2027 and make Android-related changes by July 2027, according to the European Commission notice linked in the announcement.
The decisions apply to rival AI assistants and search engines. That matters because access to Android and Search can determine whether competing services can reach users at all, or whether they remain buried behind Google’s defaults and integrations. The orders are aimed at increasing that access, though the publicly described material does not spell out every technical interface or dataset Google will have to provide.
Search data and Android access are the pressure points
The search order requires Google to start sharing search data with rivals by January 2027. The Android order gives the company until July 2027 to implement changes affecting the mobile platform.
Those dates put the remedies on a long runway. Google is not being told to flip a switch this week. It is being given deadlines to change how competitors can plug into systems that have helped keep Google services in front of users.
The practical stakes are larger than a settings menu. Google Search remains a central input for web discovery, advertising, and AI products. Android, meanwhile, controls how many people encounter assistants, search tools, and other services on phones. More access for rivals could give competing AI assistants and search engines a better chance to appear where users actually make choices.
The decisions could also affect Gemini, Google’s AI assistant, because Gemini sits inside the same competitive fight over who controls the default assistant and search experience on devices. The Verge reported that the rulings could shape Gemini’s future and create openings for rivals to gain ground.
Google’s control faces another EU test
The orders came out of technical regulatory proceedings, according to the report. That phrasing matters: this is not a broad political threat tossed at Google from a podium. It is a compliance fight over how the company must alter access to specific parts of Android and Search under EU digital competition rules.
For Google, the risk is straightforward. The more regulators force open the routes into Android and Search, the less control Google has over which services sit closest to users. For competitors, the opportunity is equally plain: access to Google-controlled infrastructure can mean distribution they could not otherwise buy or build at comparable scale.
The decisions do not by themselves guarantee that rival AI assistants or search engines will take meaningful share from Google. They do, however, set deadlines for Google to loosen access to the platforms that have made that competition so lopsided.
This story draws on original reporting from The Verge AI.