The gap the Commission is closing is concrete: download ChatGPT or Claude on an Android phone in the EU today and you get an app. Use Gemini and you get an operating-system feature that can hear a wake word, hold down the home button, read the screen, and act inside other apps. As of the July 16 decisions, that asymmetry is illegal. Under the first order, rival AI assistants gain voice activation and cross-app task execution — sending messages, booking services, retrieving contextual information — on terms equivalent to Google's own services, subject to certification and user consent.
The second order targets the data moat behind Google Search's roughly 95% share of the EU market: anonymized query, click, ranking, and view data must be made available to eligible competitors, including AI developers, on fair, reasonable, and nondiscriminatory terms. The Commission frames this as attacking the two assets that make Google's AI position nearly unbeatable — default placement on billions of Android devices and a search dataset no rival can replicate independently.
The decisions are specification measures, not fines, following a €4.1 billion penalty already levied against Google for favoring its own services on Android. Google can pursue judicial review, and Apple has already said it will not launch its new Siri assistant in the EU because of the DMA — a preview of how contentious compliance may get before the 2027 deadlines arrive.
