Google Appeals EU Requests on Android AI Access, Search Data Sharing | Business News

Alphabet’s Google said it was appealing requests from the European Union to open up its Android operating system to rival artificial-intelligence services and allow other search engines to access search data.The European Commission—the EU’s executive arm—in July issued binding instructions for Google to ensure that rival AI services could access features on Android devices to compete on an equal footing with Gemini.EU officials also made a request for Google to share search data with some third-party search engines, including AI chatbots, to help them compete more fairly with Google Search.Google said Tuesday that it had filed appeals with the General Court of the European Union, the bloc’s second-highest court, against those decisions that gave Google a January 2027 deadline on search data sharing and July next year to make changes on Android.“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,” Oliver Bethell, senior director of competition at Google, said in a statement.The European Commission didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.EU officials issued the binding instructions for Google under the Digital Markets Act, a law that imposes a set of obligations and prohibitions on companies aimed at preserving competition in the bloc.Google owner Alphabet is a gatekeeper under the DMA, a designation that requires it to take extra steps to ensure it isn’t stifling competition.Gatekeepers have to guarantee their services and those of third parties can work together in certain situations. Among the prohibitions, gatekeepers can’t treat their own services and products more favorably in ranking than what competitors are offering, or track users outside their platform for targeted advertising without consent.Companies that fail to comply with the DMA can be fined up to 10% of annual global revenue, or even up to 20% in case of repeated infringements. The EU can also impose periodic penalty payments of up to 5% of average daily sales.Write to Mauro Orru at [email protected]