EU gives Google more time

Google just got a little breathing room in Europe. But this is not Brussels backing off. It is Brussels saying Google’s first answer was not good enough, while a second fight over search data is getting even messier. The result is a weird moment where Google has more time, but also more pressure. ### What actually moved? The European Commission said on May 8 that Google has “a bit more time” to address concerns in its ongoing Digital Markets Act case after the company’s earlier proposal fell short. The immediate issue is Google Search and shopping-style results — basically, whether Google is still giving its own services better placement than rivals in ways the DMA bans. ### Why is shopping still part of this? Because the old Google Shopping fight never really disappeared. Back in 2024, the EU’s top court upheld the €2.4 billion fine over Google favoring its own comparison-shopping service in search. The DMA is a different law, but the core suspicion looks familiar — Google controls the search page, and rivals say Google still shapes that page to its own advantage. (msn.com) ### What is the second fight? It is about search data. On April 16, the Commission laid out proposed measures saying Google should give third-party search engines access to ranking, query, click, and view data on fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory terms. The proposal also says AI chatbots with search functions could qualify as beneficiaries. That is a big deal, because it turns “share with rivals” into “share with a much broader class of competitors.” (curia.europa.eu) ### Why is Google so angry about that? Because Google says the privacy guardrails do not actually hold. Sergei Vassilvitskii — a senior Google scientist focused on differential privacy — argued that the Commission’s anonymisation approach could be reversed by Google’s own red team in less than two hours. His point was not just “this is inconvenient.” It was “this could leak user information if modern AI tools can stitch identities back together.” (digital-markets-act.ec.europa.eu) ### Is this really about privacy, or about competition? Both. And that is why this is hard. The EU wants rivals to get enough data to build better search products and challenge Google’s dominance. But the more useful the data becomes, the harder it is to make that data safely anonymous. Think of it like blurring faces in a crowd photo — light blur protects privacy, but strong blur also makes the photo useless. Search logs are worse, because weird little query patterns can act like fingerprints. (timesofindia.indiatimes.com) ### So what does “more time” mean in practice? It means the Commission has not accepted Google’s current fixes, but it is still negotiating the shape of compliance instead of jumping straight to a final remedy. That buys Google time to rework proposals around ranking, display, access, and data-sharing mechanics. But it also means the Commission thinks the live product still raises unresolved DMA problems. (digital-markets-act.ec.europa.eu) ### What could Google end up having to change? Potentially a lot of small but painful things. Search ranking rules could be tightened. Rival services could get clearer access terms. Data-sharing pipes could be formalized. Eligibility could widen to include AI search products. None of that sounds dramatic on its own, but together it can chip away at the advantages that come from owning the default search box and the page layout around it. (msn.com) ### Bottom line? Google did not win extra time so much as earn an extension on homework Brussels already marked incomplete. The bigger story is that Europe is no longer just asking whether Google favors itself in search. It is also trying to decide how much of Google’s search machinery rivals should be allowed to see — without blowing a hole in user privacy. (msn.com) (digital-markets-act.ec.europa.eu)