All citizens, companies and organisations are welcome to contribute to this consultation. The Commission especially welcomes contributions from companies that are directly affected by the scope of these proceedings, namely those providing online search engine services including AI chatbots with search functionality.

The DMA is a European legislation that aims to make digital markets fairer and more open. The DMA applies to gatekeepers, which are companies operating large digital platforms that play an important role in the digital economy and act as gateways for other companies to access end users. Alphabet is one of such gatekeepers. 

Amongst others, the DMA requires gatekeepers that operate online search engine services to share anonymised ranking, query, click and view data with other search engines against fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory (FRAND) terms. To assist Alphabet in sharing such data in an effective way, the Commission opened proceedings on 27 January 2026 to specify measures that Alphabet must implement to comply with its data sharing obligation under the DMA. The Commission’s case reference is DMA.100209. 

On 16 April 2026, the Commission addressed its preliminary findings to Alphabet, including the draft measures that Alphabet must take to ensure effective sharing of Google Search data with other search engines. A case summary and the proposed measures are available in the Reference documents section below. 

The Commission is now seeking feedback from interested third parties on the proposed measures. The Commission’s measures cover five areas:

• Eligibility: Which third parties are eligible to receive data under Article 6(11) of the DMA?
• Data scope: Which data must Alphabet share?
• Anonymisation: How must Alphabet anonymise the data based on technical measures complemented by contractual measures, without unnecessarily degrading the quality and usefulness of the data?
• Pricing terms: What pricing terms for the search data can be considered FRAND?
• Sharing process: How must Alphabet share the data with third parties?

In particular, the Commission seeks views on the technical aspects of the measures:

• The effectiveness of the measures in practice: if implemented, will the proposed measures offer search data that is useful for third parties providing search engines to optimise their services while meeting the requirement that the shared data is anonymised?
• The completeness of the measures: is anything else is needed to ensure effective sharing of search data?
• Timelines: is the proposed timeline for Alphabet to implement the measures achievable?

The Commission will carefully assess the feedback provided by interested parties and Alphabet. The input received may result in adjustments to the proposed measures and will feed in the Commission’s decision making the measures legally binding on Alphabet. The Commission will adopt a final decision by 27 July 2026 (within six months of opening the proceedings).

This consultation concerns Google Search data sharing with third party undertakings providing search engines. The Commission is organising a separate consultation on Alphabet’s Android operating system interoperability with third-party AI services (case reference DMA.100220).

You can send your contributions through EU Survey.

The deadline to respond to this consultation is Friday 1 May 2026.

Your submission must be fully non-confidential. All contributions will be made available to Alphabet for comments. Contributions will not be published. The Commission may contact you with follow-up questions on your feedback.