EU Initiates Regulatory Procedure: Impact of Google's Service and Data Openness on the Technology Competition Landscape.

On Tuesday Brussels time, the European Commission officially launched two compliance procedures targeting Google. This is not a full-scale antitrust investigation, but rather a six-month regulatory dialogue aimed at assisting Google in complying with the Digital Markets Act. The core issues directly address the forefront of current technological competition: whether Google provides competitors' AI services with access as effective as its own Gemini, and whether it fairly shares its search engine data. The procedures are led by EU Commission Executive Vice President for Competition, Teresa Ribera, and must be completed with draft measures by March 2025. At a time when artificial intelligence is defining the next generation of computing gateways, the EU's move aims to set the foundational rules for this race, preventing the market from being locked in prematurely by a few giants.

The Dual Focus of Standardized Procedures: Operating System Entry Points and Data Fuel

The European Commission's action precisely targets two interrelated barriers to competition: access to smartphone operating systems and the data resources necessary for training AI. The first proceeding, under Article 6(7) of the DMA, requires Google to ensure free and effective interoperability between its Android operating system and third-party services. Specifically, EU regulators will detail how Google should grant third-party AI service providers—such as companies developing chatbots or intelligent assistants—access to hardware and software functionalities that are equally effective as those available to Google's own Gemini AI. This is not merely about opening an API interface; it involves deeper system integration, such as voice wake-up, context awareness, background operation permissions, and other features that determine the actual user experience and competitiveness of AI assistants on mobile devices.

The second procedure, based on Article 6(11) of the DMA, focuses on opening up Google's search engine data. The EU requires Google to provide anonymized ranking, query, click, and browsing data it holds to third-party search engine providers under fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory terms. This procedure will further clarify the scope of the data, anonymization methods, access conditions, and crucially determine whether AI chatbot providers are eligible to access this data. For any competitor seeking to optimize search results or train AI models, the massive, high-quality search data accumulated by Google is irreplaceable fuel. The European Commission explicitly stated in its official announcement that effective compliance and data access will allow third-party search engines to optimize their services, offering users genuine alternatives to Google Search.

Google's senior competition legal counsel, Claire Kelly, quickly responded, stating that Android is inherently open and that the company has already licensed search data to competitors under the DMA framework. However, she shifted her tone to express concern: "We are worried that further rules, often driven by competitors' complaints rather than consumer interests, could harm user privacy, security, and innovation." This statement outlines the core conflict line for the next six months of negotiations: where exactly is the boundary between open competition and protecting user experience and data security.

Strategic Intent: The EU Reshapes the Rules of the Game in the Early Era

From a strategic perspective, the EU's current action is far from an isolated technical compliance check. It represents an attempt by regulators to proactively intervene and shape the future competitive landscape during an early window period when AI technology is not yet fully mature and market structures are still evolving. The statement by Teresa Ribera clearly reveals this intention: "We aim to maximize the potential and benefits of this profound technological transformation by ensuring the competitive environment remains open and fair, rather than tilted toward the largest players." The EU's concern is that if gatekeepers like Google and Apple are allowed to deeply integrate AI services by leveraging their existing ecosystem advantages, small and medium-sized innovators in Europe and globally could be excluded from the starting line, leading to rapid market consolidation.

This is actually a continuation and upgrade of the European Union's long-term digital strategy. Looking back over the past decade, the EU's cumulative antitrust fines against Google have exceeded 8 billion euros, with the most recent being a 2.95 billion euro penalty issued in September 2025. However, the fines themselves have failed to systematically alter the market structure. The Digital Markets Act, which came into full effect in March 2023, represents a paradigm shift: moving from ex-post punishment to ex-ante regulation, establishing a series of dos and don'ts for gatekeeper platforms. This regulatory procedure is precisely a crucial step in translating the abstract principles of the DMA into enforceable technical details within the specific and critical field of AI.

The deeper reason is that the European Union lacks globally competitive homegrown giants in the consumer internet and mobile ecosystem. On the new track of generative AI, although Europe has excellent research institutions or startups like DeepMind (acquired by Google) and Mistral AI, it still faces significant challenges in transforming technology into integrated products and services for billions of consumers. By forcing Google to open Android's AI functional interfaces, the EU is essentially paving the way for Mistral AI or other European AI assistants, enabling them to deeply integrate into billions of Android devices worldwide, just like Gemini, and gain equal competitive opportunities. This is a typical regulatory leverage strategy, using control over market access to create space for local innovation.

Potential Impacts and Google's Response Dilemma

The outcome of this regulatory process will create ripple effects on the global mobile ecosystem and the competitive landscape of AI. If the EU successfully compels Google to establish sufficiently detailed open rules, one of the most direct impacts could be the fragmentation and diversification of the user experience on Android phones. In the future, users may be able to freely choose their default AI assistant in the settings, just like selecting a default browser, while different AI assistants will be able to access the same underlying device capabilities. This may give rise to a number of AI service providers focusing on vertical fields or specific privacy needs.

For Google, this is a difficult balancing act. Fully complying with the EU's demands would mean personally weakening the pre-installation and deep integration advantages of its own Gemini within the Android ecosystem—this is its core barrier against Apple's Siri and other future AI giants. The privacy and security risks argued by Google are not unfounded. Opening deeper system permissions and datasets to third parties could indeed increase the attack surface and data breach risks. Regulatory bodies need to work with Google to design technical solutions that both ensure competition and maintain security.

However, Google's room for resistance is shrinking. The DMA grants the European Commission strong enforcement powers, including fines of up to 10% of global annual turnover and structural remedies (such as requiring the divestment of business units). While the compliance procedure itself is not an investigation, the EU has made it clear that this does not affect its authority to subsequently determine Google's non-compliance and impose penalties. Considering that Google is already facing multiple investigations under the DMA framework (for example, regarding its use of online content to train AI models), cooperation and compromise may be a more pragmatic choice. The six-month timeframe also means that Google must present a concrete implementation plan by early 2025.

In fact, this is not just a game between Google and the EU. Across the Atlantic, the U.S. Department of Justice's antitrust lawsuit against Google is still ongoing, and its core also involves search monopoly. The EU's move will provide a reference template for regulators in other regions around the world. If the EU successfully establishes European standards for AI service interoperability and search data sharing, this will likely become one of the benchmarks for future global digital governance negotiations. Tech giants may face an increasingly fragmented regulatory environment, requiring compliance with different open standards in different regions.

Next Six Months: Technical Details Determine the Outcome of Competition

The next six months will be a critical period for engineers, lawyers, and regulatory officials to wrestle at the negotiation table. The success or failure of the competition will hinge on those tedious technical details: What constitutes equally effective access? How fine-grained should anonymized data be to both protect user privacy and remain useful to competitors? What are the reasonable frequency and volume for AI chatbots to access search data? These details will directly determine whether emerging AI companies can genuinely compete with Google on the same stage or merely obtain symbolic, non-competitive access.

The European Commission plans to convey its preliminary findings and draft measures to Google within three months and publish a non-confidential summary to solicit feedback from third parties. This provides affected competitors—potentially European search engines like Qwant and Ecosia, or AI startups—with a formal channel for lobbying and influence. This regulatory process is, in essence, a multi-party rulemaking exercise.

From a broader perspective, this action in Brussels marks the arrival of a new era: as the wave of artificial intelligence sweeps across everything, the focus of antitrust regulation is rapidly shifting from traditional abuses of market dominance to the control of access to key technological infrastructure and core data resources. It is no longer just about price or market share, but about who has the right to shape the paradigm of the next generation of human-computer interaction. The European Union is attempting to use laws and regulations to draw a fair competition starting line in the world of code. The outcome will profoundly influence the distribution of global technological power over the next decade.