Google must open Android to rival AI agents, EU orders
The European Union is stepping up its actions against US tech giants under the Digital Markets Act, which is intended to ensure fair competition between digital platforms. On Thursday, the European Commission issued two rulings to limit Googleβs dominance.
The Commission ordered Google to open up the Android operating system to AI assistants other than its own Gemini, ensuring that they had the same access to applications and operating system services. A second ruling ordered Google to share search data that only it is big enough to collect with other search engines.
Google has hit back at the measures, warning that they could create security issues for users. βTodayβs decisions risk undermining vital privacy and security guardrails for millions of Europeans. We have repeatedly offered solutions to safeguard users while satisfying the DMAβs goals, but these rulings discount extensive evidence of user harm,β said Kent Walker, Googleβs President of Global Affairs, in a company blog post.
The EU move doesnβt just cause problems for Google but for CISOs as well, warned Roman Stanek, CEO of Good Data AI. βEnterprise security has always leaned on a simple assumption, that apps are boxes, and the OS decides what crosses the box. But once multiple agents get equal system-level reach, access to screen context, cross-app actions, background execution, that assumption breaks.
βCISOs need to stop treating βAI assistantβ as a single, well-understood permission and start treating it as a category risk, one they have to govern like they govern app stores and MDM policies today. That requires device policies that name which agents can hold system-level permissions, not just which apps are installed. It means DLP and conditional access rules that account for an agent reading and acting on data, not just an app requesting it.,β he said.
