Report from Reuters
In Brief – Google has challenged two European Commission orders requiring it to open parts of its services to competitors, arguing that the measures would undermine privacy and security protections for European users. The orders issued in July are part of two Digital Markets Act (DMA) “specification proceedings” in which the bloc’s antitrust officials use their authority under the digital competition law to direct a “gatekeeper” on how to comply with the regulatory regime. They require Google to allow online search competitors to access certain search data and AI developers, including rivals such as OpenAI, to use services on Android devices that are available to its Gemini AI model. A Google spokesperson said the measures would force the company to share users’ private search histories without sufficient anonymization and weaken important security protections on Android. The European Commission said it would defend its orders in court and emphasized that their demands address security and data-protection concerns.
Context – While tech company fines garner headlines, DMA specification proceedings are the meat and potatoes of the EU imposing utility-style regulation onto complex digital platforms. Apple, the platform giant with a walled garden business model that has been very popular with consumers, is two years into a pair of DMA specification proceedings directing how it gives peripherals competitors, such as smart watches and headphones, full access to iPhone and iOS capabilities. The iPhone giant continues to argue that the commission’s demands harm user experience and threaten user privacy. Apple submitted their own views to the commission on the Google proceedings, warning that the regulator’s plans forcing Google to open up Android on AI could weaken privacy, security, device integrity and summed up their disdain for commission officials determining the nuances of how technical services operate, saying, “The EC is redesigning an OS (operating system). It is substituting judgments made by Google’s engineers for its own judgment based on less than three months of work.”