Google appeals EU orders to share data with AI and search rivals

Google (Alphabet) has appealed two European Union orders that required the company to give artificial-intelligence rivals such as OpenAI access to its Gemini model services, and search-engine rivals access to search data — as Reuters reports.

The orders were issued in July by the EU’s antitrust regulators under the Digital Markets Act (DMA). According to Reuters, Google filed the appeals on Monday with the General Court in Luxembourg, Europe’s second-highest court.

The tech giant’s argument is that the measures would weaken privacy protections and cause “irreversible harm” to European users. Oliver Bethell, Google’s senior director for competition, said: “We are appealing decisions that would force us to share people’s private search history without sufficient anonymization and would weaken essential security protections on Android.” “People use Search for their most personal questions — from medical concerns to close relationships — and forcing the sharing of these questions without adequate safeguards would cause irreversible harm to users’ privacy,” Bethell added.

The European Commission, the institution that enforces the DMA, insists that both measures contain strong safeguards for privacy, device integrity and security, Reuters writes.

DuckDuckGo, the U.S. search engine known for not tracking search history, sided with the EU watchdog. “The anonymization framework is strong and no manufactured doubt changes that. The only thing Google’s appeal buys is time,” the company said.

The changes demanded by Brussels are expected to take effect next year.