EU pushes Google to open Android for rival AI assistants

The European Commission asked for feedback on 27 April 2026 on draft measures that would give competing AI services better access to key Android capabilities.

This is not just another assistant feature. It is a platform intervention under the Digital Markets Act (DMA), focused on how AI assistants can operate on phones and tablets in the EU. The Commission says Google currently largely reserves these deeply integrated Android capabilities for its own AI services, including Gemini. The proposed measures would let third-party AI services interact with apps on a user's Android device and execute tasks such as sending an email through the user's preferred email app, ordering food or sharing a photo.

The facts matter: these are preliminary findings in a specification proceeding that began on 27 January 2026. This is not a final fine or a completed set of obligations. The Commission has opened a public consultation, with comments due by 13 May 2026. Reuters covered the same development as EU regulators giving Google guidance on helping AI rivals access services.

For executives, the practical consequence is clear. Mobile devices are becoming a control plane for agentic AI. If an assistant can read context, call apps and take actions on behalf of a user, the governance question shifts from “which chatbot do we allow?” to “which actions may AI perform in our apps, with our data and under whose identity?”.

CIOs should not wait for Google, Microsoft or an MDM vendor to define this alone. Map the mobile workflows that could be delegated to AI assistants: email, CRM, document sharing, travel, approvals and customer dialogue. Define which assistants are allowed, which data sources they may use, and how their actions will be logged. Requirements for OAuth scopes, conditional access, DLP and audit trails should be part of the architecture before these capabilities become default OS behaviour.

The assessment: the DMA could increase supplier choice, but it will also increase governance complexity. For companies using Android in field operations, retail, logistics or BYOD, this is an early warning. Interoperability is useful. Uncontrolled agent access to enterprise apps is not.