In brief: The EU forces Google to open Android to rival AI assistants — requiring CISOs to govern AI agents with system access as a distinct risk category.
The European Commission has mandated Google through a regulatory decision under the Digital Markets Act to open the Android operating system to AI assistants from competitors. The measure aims to limit Google’s dominance but raises substantial security requirements for CISOs.
The European Commission issued two regulatory decisions against Google on Thursday to ensure competition in digital markets. The first order prohibits Google from treating AI assistants from competitors unequally compared to Gemini. Third-party AI agents must henceforth receive the same access to applications and operating system services as Google’s own service. A second decision compels Google to share search engine data with competitors that cannot collect these data volumes themselves.
Google argues that the rulings endanger data protection and security. Kent Walker, President of Global Affairs at Google, wrote in a company blog post: “Today’s decisions jeopardize essential data protection and security safeguards for millions of Europeans. We have repeatedly offered solutions to protect users and achieve DMA objectives, but these rulings ignore extensive evidence of user harm.”
For CISOs, a new governance challenge emerges: if multiple AI agents receive system-level access to screen contents, cross-app actions, and background processes, the traditional security model collapses—the model in which the operating system regulates what an application is permitted to do. Roman Stanek, CEO of Good Data AI, warns: “CISOs must stop treating ‘AI assistant’ as a single, well-defined permission. They must govern it as a risk category, the way they already manage app stores and MDM policies today.”
This requires new device policies that explicitly name which agents are permitted to have system access—not merely which apps are installed. In parallel, DLP and Conditional Access rules must be revised to cover AI agents that read data and take action based on it, not just apps that request data.
Source: www.csoonline.com · Published 17 July 2026
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