Brussels Squeezes Google on Two Fronts: AI Assistant Interoperability and Search Data Sharing
- The European Commission ordered Google to open AI assistant interoperability and share search data
- Under the DMA, Android must also accommodate alternative AI options
- Google objects that the mandates undermine product safety
- Europe is porting its search-monopoly toolkit into the AI assistant era
Europe's regulatory artillery has reached the AI front. The European Commission ordered Google to open its AI assistant to interoperability and share search data, while DMA obligations push Android to admit alternative AI entry points. Google protests that safety will suffer.
The playbook is familiar—browser choice screens and search preference menus of the 2010s, now ported wholesale into the AI era, betting that open gateways breed competition. If Android must reserve slots for alternative AI, OpenAI, Anthropic and Mistral gain distribution that bypasses Google's gatekeeping, accelerating the phone-entry-point war. For regulators in Japan and Taiwan, Brussels remains the leading indicator; for investors, the AI gateway premium enjoyed by platform giants now carries a regulatory discount worth pricing in.