A useful search engine should help us find answers without making us wonder who else will learn the question. A competitive internet should let us choose another provider without accepting a worse service. We should expect public policy to protect both possibilities.
That is the standard worth applying to Google’s latest confrontation with European regulators.
On September 29, Google challenged the European Commission’s search-data sharing order in court. On September 30, Reuters reported that Google had also requested its suspension, arguing that compliance could seriously harm Europeans’ privacy. The Commission disputes that characterization and says its measures protect users. A request for suspension is not a ruling that the requirements are unlawful or unsafe. [1]
The underlying decision, adopted July 16 under the Digital Markets Act, requires access to anonymized search query, ranking, click and view data for eligible rival search providers, including chatbots with search functions. The Commission’s rationale is that access can help competitors improve their services. [2]
The details matter. The Commission says account information and search histories will not be shared. Its rules require removing identifiers, suppressing certain queries and restricting metadata. Recipients face restrictions on combining datasets and identifying users, plus independent audits. Permitted uses concern improving search; general-purpose AI training and unrelated advertising or profiling are excluded. [2]
Those are meaningful protections on paper. They do not, by themselves, settle whether the complete arrangement will work safely in practice. Conversely, Google’s objection does not establish that the protections will fail.
Our position is that neither institutional authority nor corporate assurances should substitute for evidence.
Google should have to explain its objections in terms that independent experts can test. Which information could expose someone? Under what conditions? What changes would address the problem while preserving useful access? A company seeking relief from a competition obligation should offer more than a general warning about privacy. It should identify a remedy that protects people and still permits competition wherever that can safely happen.
Regulators owe the public an equally demanding explanation. Describing data as anonymous should begin the scrutiny, not end it. The Commission itself acknowledges that shared queries can contain personal data about people being searched for, even where the searcher is anonymized. [2]
That distinction brings the issue back to human beings. A person can become the subject of someone else’s search without choosing a search provider, opening an account or accepting any terms. Public accountability should include those people, too.
The strongest version of this policy would make its safety claims contestable. Independent researchers should be able to examine representative, securely controlled test material and challenge the assumptions behind the safeguards. Public reports should explain what was tested, what failed and what changed, without releasing sensitive records or providing a guide to exploiting them.
There should also be a clear response when protections fail. We would favor narrowly targeted pauses, mandatory corrections and verifiable deletion where warranted. A recipient that misuses access should lose it. A technical weakness should trigger a repair with a deadline, rather than leaving the public caught between indefinite litigation and an unchanged system.
Competition deserves the same practical scrutiny. Success should mean people gain useful, independent alternatives. Regulators should ask whether recipients are developing better search, whether users can realistically switch, and whether access terms allow challengers to participate. Counting recipients alone would tell us too little.
There is a serious argument against sharing behavioral data at all: why build a more competitive market around information people may never have wanted collected? That objection deserves a place in the debate. Data access should not become an excuse to collect or retain more. Policymakers should also pursue approaches that reduce dependence on personal information, including support for open search infrastructure and services designed around minimal collection.
For American readers, the lesson is broader than Europe’s particular rules. As we argue about technology policy, we should reject any bargain that makes privacy depend on one company remaining dominant, or makes competition depend on circulating ever more information about us.
We do not yet have a demonstrated answer to the technical dispute at the center of this case. That uncertainty calls for testing and enforceable limits. It does not require abandoning the ambition of a more open internet.
“Question power. Build better.” applies to the company holding the data, the regulator ordering access and the businesses hoping to receive it. All three should have to show how their preferred outcome improves the lives of the people whose searches made this dispute possible.