Google challenges EU court order to share search data
From January 2027, data from Google's search engine is also to be made available to AI chatbot developers. The outcome of the dispute will determine whether alternative search engines and AI assistants get better tools to compete for users.
On 28 September 2026, Google filed two complaints with the General Court of the European Union in Luxembourg against decisions by the European Commission. The decisions were made under the Digital Markets Act (DMA, the EU regulation on digital markets). Reuters and Android Authority, among others, reported on the case.
The first decision, adopted by the Commission on 16 July, orders Google to share anonymized data on ranking results, queries, clicks, and impressions from January 2027. The recipients are to be competing search engines and, for the first time, also AI chatbots that function as search engines. The data may be used solely to improve their own search services. The second decision requires Google to open 11 Android features by 1 August 2027, including the microphone, camera, and voice activation, to assistants such as ChatGPT or Perplexity, on the same terms as for Gemini.
Oliver Bethell, who leads competition matters at Google, said the orders will force the company to hand over private search histories without sufficient anonymization and will weaken Android's safeguards. Google has also filed a separate request to suspend enforcement of the data-sharing order until the judgment is issued.
The Commission says it will defend the decisions. According to it, the data will be anonymized, and Google will be able to assess whether a given recipient poses a serious risk to security or data protection. The Commission justifies the order by arguing that Google has had more than a 90 percent share of the European search market for years and holds data that competitors are unable to reproduce. DuckDuckGo supported the regulator. In its view, the complaint will only delay the implementation of the rules.
The complaint itself does not suspend the effect of the decisions. The deadlines remain in force unless the court decides otherwise, and the date of the judgment is not known. If the order takes effect as planned, alternative search engines and AI assistants will receive data that may improve the relevance of their answers. For companies, this would mean the growing importance of visibility also beyond classic Google results.