Google has stepped up its legal battle with European Union regulators, challenging two orders requiring the technology giant to make parts of its services and search data more accessible to competitors.
The Alphabet-owned company filed appeals at the Luxembourg-based General Court, Europe's second-highest court, on Monday, escalating its dispute with the European Commission over the scope and implementation of the Digital Markets Act (DMA).
The EU's antitrust regulators ordered Google in July to take measures that would allow rival online search providers and artificial intelligence developers to access services used by its Gemini AI model.
The measures are part of the bloc's broader effort under the DMA to curb the market power of major technology companies and promote competition in digital markets.
Google, however, argues that complying with the orders could expose users to privacy and security risks, particularly by requiring the company to provide competitors with access to personal search information.
Oliver Bethell, Google's senior director of competition, said the company was challenging the decisions because of concerns over privacy and security.
“We're appealing decisions that will force us to share people's private search history without sufficient anonymisation and weaken vital security protections on Android,” Bethell said in a statement.
He added that users often rely on Google Search for highly personal information.
“People use Search for their most personal questions — from medical worries to close relationships — and mandating we share these personal queries without adequate safeguards would cause irreversible harm to user privacy,” he said.
EU defends safeguards
The European Commission, which is responsible for enforcing the DMA, has rejected concerns that the measures would compromise users' privacy or security.
The regulator said the two measures contain safeguards designed to protect user privacy, the integrity of devices and overall security.
The dispute therefore centres on how far regulators can go in requiring dominant technology companies to open up their services to competitors without compromising protections that users have come to expect from those platforms.
The changes are scheduled to take effect next year, setting the stage for further confrontation between Google and EU authorities as the DMA becomes more deeply embedded in the bloc's digital regulatory framework.
DuckDuckGo backs EU position
Google's position has also drawn a response from DuckDuckGo, the US-based internet privacy company whose search engine is marketed around limiting the tracking of users and their personal data.
DuckDuckGo backed the European Commission's approach, arguing that the safeguards surrounding the sharing of search data are sufficiently strong.
“The anonymization framework is robust and no amount of manufactured doubt changes that. The only thing an appeal buys Google is time,” a DuckDuckGo spokesperson said.
The legal challenges now put the EU's digital competition rules before the General Court, where Google's arguments over privacy, security and regulatory requirements will be examined.
The case highlights a broader tension at the heart of Europe's regulation of Big Tech: how to force dominant digital platforms to give competitors greater access while maintaining safeguards around the vast amounts of personal data generated by their users.