The pulse between Google and the European Commission Tensions have escalated. Brussels has put forward a proposal that, if confirmed, could fundamentally change how the online search business competes and how many artificial intelligence systems are trained. The focus is on a very specific asset: search data, which the Mountain View giant has controlled almost exclusively until now.
The central idea is that Google will have to share some of that data —queries, clicks, rankings, views and even chatbot interactions with search functions— with other digital engines and services in Europe, so that they can improve their products and challenge the dominance of the world's most used search engine.
The Digital Markets Act comes into play
This entire movement is based on the Digital Markets Law (DMA)The regulation, with which the European Union aims to curb the power of large platforms considered "gatekeepers of access," was launched by the European Commission earlier this year to investigate its compliance with its obligations. The Commission has now submitted its preliminary findings.
According to that document, Brussels believes that the way Google currently restricts access to data This may be harming competition, especially in a context where artificial intelligence and data-based services are rapidly gaining importance.
The proposal aims to allow other search engines and AI solutions with similar functions to access key information: user queries, ranking positions, click and view metricsas well as data generated by chatbots acting as conversational search engines. All of this, of course, under "fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory" conditions.
The stated objective is clear: prevent exclusive control of this data further strengthen Google's dominant position and close the door to a near-monopoly scenario in the European online search market.
Search data as a strategic resource
In the Commission's view, Search data is much more than just simple statisticsThey are now considered an essential input for technological innovation, both for alternative search engines and for new digital services, including AI assistants and co-pilots, such as Google Personal Intelligence, which depend on fresh and well-contextualized information.
The Vice-President of the European Commission responsible for Competition, the Spanish Teresa RiberaHe insisted that data is a key input for online searches and for the development of new services, including artificial intelligence, and that access to that information should not be limited in a way that harms competition.
Along those lines, the community proposal establishes that access to Google data must be structured under conditions of transparency and non-discriminationThe aim is to create a framework for negotiations between Google and potential beneficiaries: rival search engines, developers of discovery tools, and providers of AI solutions.
To make it operational, Brussels goes into considerable detail: it defines which actors will be able to access the dataWhat type of information will be shared, how frequently access will be provided, and under what parameters prices will be set. Furthermore, it makes all of this conditional upon guaranteeing the anonymization of personal data, in accordance with European data protection regulations.
What would Google have to share, and with whom?
The technical requirements set by the Commission are extensive. On the one hand, a set of "data beneficiaries" that could access the information: third-party search engines, platforms with internal search capabilities, and AI services that act as a search engine, including conversational chatbots.
On the other hand, the scope of the exchange is being defined. Brussels wants that rivals may receive data related to the query (what is being searched for), the ranking (in what order the results are shown), the interaction (which links are clicked, how much is viewed) and the content generated by AI-based search tools.
The Commission also raises criteria for establishing the frequency and means of access: how the data is delivered, how frequently, under what APIs or technical formats, and what security and traceability obligations must accompany the process.
Another key element is pricing. It is suggested that any financial compensation for accessing this data must be based on clear, transparent and non-discriminatory parametersso that Google cannot favor some actors over others through opaque pricing.
Privacy first: the clash with Google's arguments
Google's reaction, as expected, has been highly critical. The company states that Brussels' proposal is an "overreach" which not only goes beyond the mandate of the DMA, but could seriously compromise the privacy and security of European users.
Clare Kelly, Google's senior legal advisor on competition matters, has emphasized that hundreds of millions of people in Europe They rely on the search engine for their most sensitive inquiries: questions about health, family matters, personal finances, or delicate situations. And it argues that forcing the company to share this data with third parties, even anonymized, would mean delegating that trust to systems with privacy protections "dangerously ineffective."
Google argues that the request It far exceeds what the law stipulates.and that it would be required to hand over private data to companies that, in its view, do not have the same security standards. This is the core of its argument: it's not just about competition, but about protecting users' most intimate information and the debates surrounding it. risks of AI.
The company also points out that they have already submitted their own compliance proposals to appease both European regulators and their rivals, but they believe the measures demanded by Brussels go too far. At the same time, they face a long history of sanctions: more than €9.700 billion in antitrust fines in Europe since 2017 and accusations of violating the WFD since 2025.
A tight schedule and open public consultation
The initiative is in a key public consultation phaseThe European Commission has invited all interested parties — Google, its competitors, developers, consumer associations and other players in the digital sector — to submit comments until May 1.
That period will serve to adjust the technical and legal details of the measures, especially the most sensitive points: what is considered anonymized data, what limits are imposed on the reuse of information and how compliance with the rules by beneficiaries is monitored.
Once the comment period has ended, it will be Brussels' turn to revise its proposal, if it deems it necessary, and turn it into a binding decisionThe Commission has set a deadline of July 27 to adopt the final resolution, which will officially establish what Google must do in Europe regarding the exchange of search data.
If, at the end of the process, non-compliance with the DMA is confirmed and Google does not adapt its behavior, the company risks fines of up to 10% of their global annual turnoverIn a group like Alphabet, the parent company of the search engine, we would be talking about multi-million dollar amounts that go far beyond a simple reprimand.
Impact on competition and on European companies
Beyond the regulatory dispute, analysts agree that Access to search data could reshape the European digital marketDario Maisto, from the firm Forrester, believes that the Commission's decision may come at an inopportune moment, but sees it as aligned with the need to reduce dependence on foreign suppliers and technologies that, today, set the standard.
Maisto points out that, in practice, the synonym for "searching the internet" is still "Google it." The big question is whether opening up the data will be enough to change users' habits. In other words, one thing is giving access to the raw data, and quite another is... to get people to adopt other engines when you've been using the same one for years.
Brian Jackson, director of research at Info-Tech Research Group, points out that sharing data could revive specialized search enginesespecially in high-value vertical sectors (healthcare, finance, industry, professional services) where users need results highly tailored to their reality.
In that scenario, companies' digital teams would have to Optimize your presence for multiple discovery environmentsInstead of focusing all their efforts on Google. And software buyers would have more alternatives, as more vendors could offer search and intelligence solutions based on real behavioral data.
A more fragmented (and riskier) search ecosystem
This fragmentation, however, also has its downside. Jackson himself warns that a search ecosystem with many actors relying on the same data It could encourage more aggressive business models, increase the risk of manipulating results, foster fraud, and increase bias in certain contexts.
In such an environment, data governance and regulatory oversight become even more critical. More search channels mean more potential points of abuseand they force both regulators and the companies themselves to strengthen controls.
For Sanchit Vir Gogia, chief analyst at Greyhound Research, the real earthquake lies not so much in the word "competition" as in who controls the interpretation of business informationFor years, many companies have relied on the stability of a near-monopoly discovery layer, dominated by Google.
That stability marked from how the content was written and SEO was done even how digital performance was measured. If data is opened up and alternative engines and AI systems with different logics flourish, the same content could be displayed differently depending on the search engine or assistant interpreting it, creating inconsistencies in how brands are perceived.
Redefining "optimization" in the age of AI
Gogia argues that we are heading towards a deeper change: Search has become the layer that feeds AIco-pilots and many automated decisions. Once that layer is fragmented and no longer concentrated in a single provider, companies lose a clear point of reference for how they are represented externally.
This loss of coherence may seem minor at first, but over time it acquires a Tangible impact on reputation and businessBrands may find that their message appears one way in a chatbot, another way in a traditional search engine, and yet another way in a specialized vertical search engine, all of which are fed by similar data but interpreted differently.
For European companies, all this implies redefining their understanding of "optimization." It will no longer be enough to simply... to position yourself well on a single dominant platformWe will need to consider how to express content so that it fits into several systems at once, how to monitor results, and what to do when an AI algorithm presents an inaccurate or biased version of business reality.
At the same time, questions arise about the quality of the shared data: whether it is anonymized and aggregated too much, They lose some of their value for model training and engine tuning. And if they are shared with a higher level of detail, concerns about privacy and possible re-identifications grow.
At the heart of this clash between Brussels and Google lies a fundamental question about who sets the rules of the game in Europe: whether it will be community regulationWill it impose openness and limits on the power of the big players, or will the platforms themselves, with their control over the data, continue to dictate the evolution of the search engine of the future and the AI ​​that accompanies it?