Google’s control over Android’s assistant and search data is about to face its most practical test yet. On July 16, 2026, the European Commission issued two binding specification decisions under the Digital Markets Act: one covering AI assistant access to Android features, and another covering Google’s Search data. The first reaches the phone in your hand. The second reaches the information that helps a search service improve. The Commission says the goal is to give European users more choice without dropping privacy and security protections.
Android Is Being Opened at the Feature Level
The Android decision is based on Article 6(7) of the DMA. It requires free and effective interoperability with hardware and software features that Google controls through Android, and says the access must be equally effective to Google’s own services. The Commission’s technical specification groups 11 features into four categories: invocation, context, actions on apps and the operating system, and access to resources. The developer specification names the covered capabilities rather than leaving the requirement at the level of a general principle.
The list includes long-press home invocation, always-on hotword detection, access to on-device app data, context and ambient inputs, structured actions inside apps, screen automation, system controls, on-device models, model installation and execution, and background execution. Structured integration includes sending a message or scheduling a meeting, and names Gmail, Calendar, Drive, Docs, Maps, YouTube, Messages, and Phone.
The rules also constrain the user experience around that choice. Interoperability cannot be made dependent on an assistant holding the default role, and Google cannot add unnecessarily cumbersome settings or extra user friction. Users must explicitly consent to an installed assistant’s access. The obligation applies across Google’s Android ecosystem, including devices made by other manufacturers, while the specification says the implementation effort rests with Google rather than those manufacturers. The same technical document says the wider package must be in place by Android 18, no later than August 1, 2027. Concurrent hotword detection for multiple AI services has a later Android 19 deadline of August 1, 2028.
Search Data Comes With Gates
The second decision concerns Article 6(11) of the DMA. The Commission’s January announcement describes the proceeding as covering access for third-party search engines to anonymised ranking, query, click, and view data on fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory terms. It also says the scope includes the data, the anonymisation method, access conditions, and eligibility for AI chatbot providers. The Commission’s final guidance makes the AI angle explicit: chatbots that offer search functionality can be eligible to receive the shared data.
The decision does not describe an unrestricted export of Google’s logs. Google must share the same data it collects to optimise its own Search services, but the shared material is subject to a multi-layered anonymisation method developed with privacy experts and aligned with the draft Joint Guidelines on the Digital Markets Act and the GDPR. Google may also assess, before sharing, whether a particular recipient creates serious cybersecurity or data-protection risks. The access price must follow a fair formula and a transparent process, and the Commission says it can amend the decision after independent third-party evaluation or in response to market developments. Those conditions are set out in the Commission’s guidance.
That design leaves a difficult question in plain sight: how much search data remains useful after it is made safe enough to share? The Commission has built review and risk checks into the order, but those safeguards also determine how much practical value a rival service receives. Privacy is not a footnote here. It is the boundary around the remedy.
Why the Two Decisions Belong Together
The Commission opened both specification proceedings on January 27, 2026, under Articles 6(7) and 6(11), and said it intended to complete them within six months. The final decisions arrived on July 16, the date in the Commission’s final guidance. The opening notice says the Android proceeding focused on access to features used by Google’s own AI services, while the Search proceeding addressed the conditions under which rivals could receive anonymised data.
The Commission says 60% of EU users have an Android device, which explains why the assistant requirement matters beyond a developer API. Its final guidance frames the measures as a way to let companies offer European users a wider and more feature-rich range of options. Google’s response presents the same changes as a privacy and security risk. Kent Walker wrote that the decisions “risk undermining vital privacy and security guardrails for millions of Europeans” and argued that “Europeans’ private searches would be exposed to unfamiliar companies, without adequate anonymisation of the data and without user knowledge or consent.” Google’s statement also says the Android order could grant external apps sensitive device permissions without existing safeguards.
What This Means
For European Android users, the immediate practical issue is choice with consequences. A rival assistant may eventually be able to wake by voice, read approved context, act in supported apps, use covered system features, and run in the background under the same general conditions as Google’s service. The user’s explicit consent and the eligibility rules remain part of that access, while Google is responsible for implementing the technical bridge across its Android ecosystem. The technical specification is unusually specific about those boundaries.
For people concerned about search privacy, the data-sharing decision is more ambivalent. It opens a route for eligible AI chatbots and search competitors to receive data that Google uses to optimise Search, but the route runs through anonymisation, security assessment, transparent pricing, and possible independent review. The Commission has not removed the privacy problem. It has made the privacy method part of the competition remedy, with the option to revise it as evidence arrives. The final guidance is the measure to watch as those conditions are tested.
The Bottom Line
The EU’s two DMA decisions attack Google’s AI advantage at two connected points: the Android features that make an assistant useful and the Search data that helps a search service improve. Rival access is now a binding obligation, but it is not a blank cheque. The eventual test will be whether the specified interoperability is genuinely as effective as Google’s own access while the anonymisation and security controls remain strong enough to protect the people whose searches created the data in the first place.