The EU Commission has sent its preliminary results to the US company Google as part of an investigation. The commission announced this in a press release published on Sunday. The findings submitted to Google outline the measures the company should implement to provide third parties effective access to Android’s key features and ensure their interoperability.
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At the end of January, the EU Commission began the determination process and gave Google a deadline of six months to remove any technical hurdles for competitors’ AI assistants on Android. European Union regulators are examining whether Google is complying with EU requirements under the Digital Markets Act (DMA) and treating competing AI software in Android fairly.
Interoperability for alternative AI service providers
“With the rapidly changing AI landscape, it is clear that interoperability is key to unlocking the full potential of these technologies,” said Henna Virkkunen, EU Commissioner for Technological Sovereignty, Security and Democracy. “These measures will open Android devices to a wider range of AI services, giving users the freedom to choose the AI services that best suit their needs and values without sacrificing functionality.”
The measures now proposed are intended to ensure, writes the EU Commission in its communication, “that competing AI services can interact effectively with applications on Android devices and carry out tasks such as sending emails via the user’s preferred email app, ordering food or sharing photos with friends.”
Currently, Google largely reserves these functions for use by its own AI offerings on Android smartphones and tablets, the Commission said. The measures she proposes would, for example, enable users in the future to activate competing AI services simply using an individual “wake word”. In addition, the Commission said, the measures enabled competing AI service providers to drive innovation and offer deeply integrated AI experiences to users on Android smartphones and tablets alongside Alphabet’s AI services, such as Gemini.
“Today’s proposed measures will give Android users more choice in the AI services they use and integrate into their smartphone, including the wide range of AI services that compete with Google’s own AI,” said EU Competition Commissioner Teresa Ribera.
Call for comment
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To ensure that the measures it proposes are effective, the EU Commission invites interested parties to comment in a public consultation. These comments can be submitted until May 13th.
The Commission announces that it will carefully examine the feedback from stakeholders and Google itself and, if necessary, adapt the proposed measures. The supervisory authority will issue the final decision within six months of initiating the determination procedure on January 27th. This will then contain the final binding measures, it said.
The European Digital Markets Act (DMA) has been in force since November 2022 and is intended to set limits on the market power of so-called gatekeepers such as Google, Amazon or Apple and make competition in the digital sector fairer. According to the EU regulation, companies that offer central platform services and have a lasting, significant influence on the EU internal market are classified as gatekeepers. At the beginning of the year it was announced that the EU Commission plans to enforce digital legislation around the Digital Services Act (DSA) and DMA more decisively in 2026.
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