Google Appeals EU Demand to Open Up AI and Search on Android

Google is appealing a set of EU measures requiring it to open up Android to third-party AI assistants and search services. And it is using that most spurious of excuses–security–to justify its opposition to these requirements, even though those concerns are already addressed by the measures.

“We’re appealing decisions that will force us to share people’s private search history without sufficient ‌anonymization ⁠and weaken vital security protections on Android,” a Google statement explains. “People use Search for their most personal questions, from medical worries to close relationships, and mandating we share these personal queries without adequate safeguards would cause irreversible harm to user privacy.”

In July, the European Commission issued two sets of binding specification measures to Google under the Digital Markets Act (DMA), requiring it to make Android interoperable with third-party AI assistants and not just Gemini and requiring it to share Google Search data with third-party online search services. In both cases, the platforms are so-called gatekeepers because of their dominant usage share and thus fall under more stringent regulatory requirements to prevent them from harming competition.

The problem for Google is that the complaints it raises in the quote above were already addressed in the July announcement.

“Importantly, the measures incorporate robust safeguards to ensure that the privacy of users, device integrity and security are protected,” the Commission wrote at the time. “[The Search measure] sets out a multi-layered method to anonymize the shared data, developed in close collaboration with internal and external privacy experts and in line with the draft Joint Guidelines on the interplay of the DMA and GDPR by the Commission and the European Data Protection Board. The decision further allows Google to assess, before sharing any data, whether sharing such data with a specific third-party poses serious cyber security and data protection risks.”

And at least one third-party search service agrees with the EU.

“The anonymization framework is robust and no amount of manufactured doubt changes that,” a DuckDuckGo statement notes. “The only thing an appeal buys Google is time.”