EU forces Google to open 11 Android features to rival voice assistants

The European Commission has ordered Alphabet, under the Digital Markets Act, to grant third-party assistants access to eleven Android features on equal terms with Google’s own Gemini. The July 16, 2026 decision targets always-on wake word detection, ambient sensor access, screen automation, home-gesture assistant invocation, and on-device AI models. Crucially, Google can no longer gate these capabilities behind the default-assistant role, and it must let wake word detection from multiple services — including competitors — run concurrently. The Open Home Foundation, which builds the Android app for Home Assistant, was invited to consult and says the ruling reflects the technical objections it raised.

The fight centers on Android’s two-stage wake word system. A low-power DSP handles first-pass detection in a network-isolated process, with the CPU confirming matches only after a likely trigger — an efficient, privacy-preserving design that Google reserved for itself and device makers. Locked out of the DSP, Home Assistant’s community spent three years shipping a CPU-based workaround for its ‘Okay Nabu’ command. The cost was steep: battery drain jumping from roughly 1 percent to 15 percent, a microphone indicator stuck permanently on because the app needed full mic access, and a requirement that users set Home Assistant as their default assistant just to survive reboots. The Commission’s decision documents this DSP architecture in detail, matching what developers had reverse-engineered from Android source.

Google must deliver ‘equally effective’ access — measured on ease of use, speed, and energy consumption — with full documentation, free testing tools, and monthly progress reports, no commercial agreement required. The changes land in Android 18 by August 1, 2027, with concurrent hotword detection following in Android 19 by August 1, 2028. Google has raised security concerns and, because it still designs the implementation, there’s real risk of malicious compliance: a technically compliant but unusable solution. The strict ‘equally effective’ standard and reporting obligations are meant to make that harder, but enforcement will determine whether the ruling translates into practical interoperability for smaller developers.