Google is pushing back hard against a European Commission proposal that would force it to share search data with competitors, arguing the plan has a glaring privacy problem: the anonymization doesn’t actually work.
A senior Google scientist demonstrated that users could be re-identified from the supposedly anonymized datasets in under two hours.
What the EU wants and why Google says no
The European Commission proposed on April 16, 2026, that Google must share search data, including ranking, query, click, and view data, with third-party search engines and AI services. The terms would be fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory, known in regulatory shorthand as FRAND.
On May 6, 2026, Google’s scientist publicly flagged the re-identification vulnerability. Clare Kelly, Google’s Senior Competition Counsel, echoed the concern, stating that additional rules may compromise user privacy and innovation. Google has already begun licensing some data as part of its compliance with the Digital Markets Act, but the company is drawing a line at broader mandates.
