On July 16, the European Commission issued two binding measures against Google under the Digital Markets Act (DMA): one forces Android to give competing AI assistants equal access to key features, the other forces Google to share anonymized search data (query, click, ranking signals) with rival search engines.
What Changed
According to the European Commission itself and reporting from The Register and BNN Bloomberg, third-party AI assistants today have restricted access to key Android functionality — which keeps them from competing on equal footing with Gemini. Under the new rule, users will be able to activate their preferred AI assistant by voice (the way "Hey Google" works today) and let it perform actions inside other apps on their behalf. The Android changes ship with the platform's next major release (Android 18); search-data sharing takes effect with pricing finalized by January 2027.
Why It Matters
This is the first time a regulator has forced an entire mobile ecosystem to treat competing AI assistants as first-class citizens. That reduces lock-in to a single AI vendor within Android and sets a precedent other regulators — including outside Europe — may follow.
The Impact for Brazil
Brazilian companies building products or automations on top of the Android ecosystem, or evaluating which AI assistant to integrate into their workflows, get an important signal: the "one dominant assistant by default" architecture is under growing regulatory pressure, even outside Brazil. That reinforces the case against locking critical processes into a single AI vendor — forced interoperability in Europe today can become market expectation (or regulatory requirement) elsewhere tomorrow.
Entercast's Take
Platform regulation usually feels distant from the day-to-day of implementing AI inside a company — but decisions like this one shape which integrations will be possible and affordable in the coming years. Companies already building with a multi-vendor architecture, without rigid dependency on a single assistant or model, are better positioned to take advantage of this kind of regulatory opening as it spreads globally.