EU plans to make Google share search data with rivals

The European Commission has proposed rules that would require Google to share search data with rival search engines in the EU to help them compete under the Digital Markets Act, with measures intended to ensure personal data is anonymized.

The draft covers the scope of the data Google must share and how often it must provide it.

It also sets out rules on anonymization, access for beneficiaries, and pricing.

Google said the plan would force it to share sensitive data and that safeguards were too weak.

Feedback is open until May 1, with a final decision expected in July.

The EU charged Google in March 2025 with breaching the DMA, and DMA breaches can draw fines of up to 10% of global annual revenue.

🔗 Source: Reuters

🧠 Food for thought

Implications, context, and why it matters.

European search rivals aren’t waiting for regulators

EU talks continue, yet Google’s European competitors are already building their own systems to rely less on US technology 1.
Qwant in France and Germany-based Ecosia created a joint venture called European Search Perspective (EUSP) to build a European search index, then launched it under the name Staan 2.
They cite digital sovereignty goals and higher fees for Microsoft Bing’s Search API, which lets other companies pull Bing results into their own services and supports many alternative search engines today 1.
Some competitors say the EU’s proposed data-sharing plan falls short because it would not include Google Search assets like index data, only ranking, query, click and view data, so competition would change little 3.

The real battle is for control over AI’s information layer

The action centers on control of the data that feeds AI systems 3.
EU specification proceedings set out how Google must meet the Digital Markets Act and they examine whether AI chatbot providers can access Google’s anonymized ranking, query, click and view data 4.
For decades, businesses have tuned content to one discovery layer, Google.
A more fragmented market with several search engines and AI tools reading information in different ways could remove that single reference point, which may push companies to optimize for multiple algorithms 3.