On July 16 the European Commission adopted two binding specification decisions under the Digital Markets Act that do something narrower and more surgical than a fine: they rewrite the plumbing of Android. Google must open 11 operating-system features to rival AI assistants, and beginning January 2027 it must share anonymized Google Search data with competitors including OpenAI and Microsoft on FRAND terms, with a pricing formula the Commission has already sketched.

The list of 11 features is where the abstraction becomes concrete. Today Gemini can be summoned by a custom wake word running as a persistent background process in the OS audio-detection layer, and by the long-press home button and navigation handle, entry points that downloaded apps simply can’t register. Under the specification, ChatGPT, Claude and anyone else get the same hooks. Google completed its transition from Google Assistant to Gemini as the default Android AI only earlier this year. The moat lasted roughly six months.

The data-sharing order is the deeper structural move. Search click and query data, anonymized, is the exhaust that trained a generation of ranking systems and is now the missing ingredient for chatbot answer quality. Handing it to OpenAI is the regulatory equivalent of forcing a utility to sell its meter readings to competing utilities.

Kent Walker, Google’s lawyer, framed the objections in the register the company has settled into for DMA fights. “Today’s decisions risk undermining vital privacy and security guardrails for millions of Europeans,” he said, adding: “We have repeatedly offered solutions to safeguard users while satisfying the DMA’s goals, but these rulings discount extensive evidence of user harm.”

The privacy-and-security framing is doing familiar work, and the Commission has heard it before from the same podium. It’s also arriving into an unfavorable procedural weather system. On July 8 the General Court, ruling in the Apple gatekeeper cases, established that designated gatekeepers can’t challenge DMA obligations in the abstract and don’t get automatic suspension of compliance while they appeal. Non-compliance carries fines of up to 10 percent of annual worldwide turnover.

Google can litigate. It has to open the API first. That sequencing, more than any single specification, is what the DMA now means in practice.

Sources