European Union regulators issued an ultimatum to Google, requiring it to remove technical barriers that prevent rival AI search assistants from connecting to the Android system within six months and provide key search data to other search engines in response to the EU's new round of strong regulatory actions against large technology companies.
EU regulators said they will review whether Google complies with relevant strict regulations under the Digital Markets Act (DMA), the group's flagship digital regulatory framework, including whether it truly allows Android to interoperate with third-party AI software and whether it provides valuable online search data to competing search services under "fair conditions."
Although this move has not yet been upgraded to a formal antitrust investigation, Brussels clearly intends to put pressure on Google to restructure its services from the technical and product architecture levels so that competitors can access the Android operating system and obtain the large amount of search data held by Google under reasonable conditions. Regulators set a six-month compliance period for this and warned that if Google failed to "comply", it may face the risk of future penalties.
EU Competition Chief Teresa Rivera said in a statement that the purpose of this procedure is to help Google understand and fulfill its obligations under the Digital Markets Act regarding interoperability and online search data sharing through more detailed explanations.
Google expressed concern about the continued tightening of rules. Claire Kelly, the company's senior competition counsel, pointed out that these additional regulations are "often driven more by complaints from competitors than based on consumer interests" and may weaken user privacy protection, system security and product innovation capabilities.
In addition to this latest upgrade, Google parent company Alphabet is currently facing other potential fine risks under the DMA framework, including accusations that it unfairly favors its own services in its huge search business system and restricts application developers from directing users to preferential programs outside the Google Play Store. The company is also facing another investigation by the European Union for allegedly unfairly downranking some content in news search results.
The ongoing wave of censorship has made Google’s accumulated fines in the EU likely to further increase from the existing 9.5 billion euros. It is also widely seen as one of the factors exacerbating tensions between Google and the Trump administration in the United States.
According to the procedure launched on Tuesday, if Google still does not adjust its behavior, the EU may decide to formally open an investigation in the future, paving the way for huge fines of up to 10% of global annual turnover. Although regulators in Brussels rarely use maximum penalties in practice, this time they signaled their willingness to impose stricter constraints on "gatekeeper" platforms in the AI era.