Google Appeals EU Requests on Android AI Access, Search Data Sharing — Update

By Mauro Orru

Alphabet's Google appealed 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, saying they pose privacy and security risks.

The European Commission--the EU's executive arm--said in July that Google should take steps to ensure that rival AI services could access features on Android devices to compete on equal footing with Gemini.

The bloc said at the time that third-party AI assistants faced limitations in how they could offer their services on Android phones, and that Google should let users activate their preferred AI assistant via voice commands so they could use it to perform actions in apps like booking a taxi on their behalf.

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 and give users in Europe a better range of options to choose from.

Google said Tuesday that it had filed appeals with the General Court of the European Union, the bloc's second-highest court, against the decisions that gave the company a January deadline on search data sharing and until July 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 company said that the EU's decision on search data sharing meant it would have to pass sensitive data to commercial entities without sufficient protections, user knowledge, or consent. It also said that granting powerful permissions on Android to downloaded apps that haven't been vetted by phone makers posed threats to device security.

A European Commission spokeswoman said the bloc would defend its decisions in court and that the requests it made had carefully considered integrity and security with respect to the features involved as well as the protection of personal data.

EU officials issued the binding requests for Google under the Digital Markets Act, a law that imposes a set of obligations and prohibitions 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. Meanwhile, 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 mauro.orru@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

September 29, 2026 07:10 ET (11:10 GMT)