After forcing Google to open up Android to third-party app stores, the EU is back with a new target, and this time it’s Gemini‘s home-field advantage. The European Commission ordered Google on July 16 to give rival AI apps the same deep access to Android that’s currently exclusive to Gemini. The order falls under the EU’s Digital Markets Act (DMA), and it directs Google to stop treating its own assistant as a first-class citizen on a platform it controls.
What Google now has to hand over
Under the ruling, Google must allow competing AI apps to respond to voice triggers on Android the same way Gemini does, meaning users should be able to summon ChatGPT or Claude with similar wake words. Google also has to let those apps complete tasks across the device, including other apps and background processes, and give them the same access to context from apps and sensors that Gemini already uses to offer proactive help.
The access even extends to hardware and on-device AI models, resources that currently only Gemini gets to use. Google has until August 1, 2027, to build all of this out, and it hasn’t taken to it kindly, warning the changes put user privacy and security at risk.
Google is complying, while Apple is stuck in limbo
Apple hit a similar wall with the EU earlier this year. The DMA’s interoperability rules would have required Apple to give competing AI services the same access to Siri and iOS that Apple Intelligence features get. Apple says it spent months negotiating alternative proposals, all of which EU regulators rejected, and confirmed Siri AI won’t be included when iOS 27 launches in the EU, sharing no timeline for when it might arrive.
Google is taking the opposite approach, building out access instead of pulling Gemini’s AI features from the region. So nothing changes for Android users in the EU right away. Gemini will keep its head start until the 2027 deadline hits, but the countdown on that advantage has already started.
How this ruling could lighten the load on your wallet
The most immediate benefit here is choice. If you’re already using ChatGPT or Claude, this ruling means those apps could eventually do things on your Android phone that only Gemini can do today. You wouldn’t have to switch to Gemini to get that level of integration.
However, that level of access won’t necessarily be free. Some of Gemini’s most capable features, like screen automation, have limits based on your subscription tier. If ChatGPT and Claude build out similar Android integration, there’s a good chance their versions will come with the same kind of paywall.
That’s where cheaper alternatives could matter. Models coming out of China, including DeepSeek, Kimi, and MiniMax, cost far less to run than Gemini, ChatGPT, or Claude, anywhere from ten to a hundred times cheaper, depending on the model. Similar functionality built using these models could cost users a fraction of a typical subscription, once the same level of Android access becomes available to them.
Whether that happens is still up in the air. What’s certain is that Google no longer gets to make that decision alone.