Google Appeals EU Orders Forcing Search Data Sharing and Android Access for AI Rivals

Google is going to court to stop Brussels from handing its search data and Android phones to AI rivals.

The company has filed appeals at the EU General Court in Luxembourg against two orders the European Commission issued in July under the Digital Markets Act. Both target the parts of Google's business that matter most as search shifts toward chatbots.

The first order requires Google, starting in January 2027, to share anonymised search query and click data with rival search engines. AI chatbots count as rivals. That data is the raw material that makes a search engine good, and Google has spent two decades accumulating more of it than anyone.

The second order reaches into Android. By August 2027, competing AI assistants must get the same access to 11 Android features that Gemini enjoys, including voice activation and the ability to carry out tasks inside other apps. In practice, that would let a rival assistant sit where Gemini sits on hundreds of millions of phones.

Google's argument: privacy and security

Oliver Bethell, Google's senior director for competition, framed the fight around users rather than market share. He said the decisions would force Google to share people's private search history without sufficient anonymisation and would weaken Android's security protections, warning of "irreversible harm to user privacy."

The Commission sees it differently. It says the search data would be anonymised before anyone receives it, and that Google can assess whether a given recipient poses serious security or data protection risks. The Android changes, in its view, are simply meant to put rival assistants on an even footing with Google's own.

A crowded docket in Brussels

The appeals land on top of a separate July case in which the Commission fined Google €890 million for favouring its own services. Regulators on both sides of the Atlantic have been pressing the company on several fronts at once, even as it has held onto its ad exchange in the US remedies fight.

Filing an appeal does not freeze the orders on its own, and the General Court has not ruled. General Court cases typically take well over a year, which means the January 2027 data-sharing deadline could arrive before judges decide whether Google has to meet it.

What is at stake is who gets to build the next front door to the internet. If the orders stand, every AI assistant competing in Europe gets a slice of the data and phone access that made Google dominant. If Google wins, it keeps both advantages as the chatbot race heats up.