Google Issues Danger Warning, Fate of Users on the Edge
Jakarta, CNBC Indonesia - EU regulators are urging Google to share search engine data with competitors such as OpenAI. The reason is to create a fairer competitive environment and avoid monopolistic practices.
However, this regulation is touted to bring major dangers. Google’s renowned scientists warn that the rules risk leaking users’ personal information.
The European Commission, which has long acted as the enforcer of competition law in the EU, has targeted US tech giants for years. They are pressing major platforms to ensure users have plenty of choices.
One way is to eliminate monopolistic practices. Smaller platforms must be given opportunities to compete, so all service providers strive to deliver the best quality to users.
Sergei Vassilvitskii, a Google scientist since 2012, will meet with EU antitrust officials on Wednesday (6/5) local time to voice concerns about the law enforcers’ proposal. He will request a broader approach with better security safeguards.
The EU proposal, which will be finalised in the coming weeks after receiving input from stakeholders, has triggered a strong response from Google. The Mountain View giant claims the regulators are interfering excessively and could endanger user privacy.
The issue is that the European Commission’s proposed method for ensuring anonymised personal data, Vassilvitskii says, underscores concerns that it may not be robust enough to prevent modern AI tools from sifting through data to identify individuals.
“We are concerned because the European Commission’s approach to anonymisation fails to protect the privacy of European citizens: our red team successfully re-identified users in less than two hours,” he said in an exclusive written comment to Reuters, quoted on Wednesday (6/5/2026).
Google’s AI red team is a group of hackers who simulate realistic adversarial activities to highlight potential vulnerabilities and weaknesses, and find solutions.
“We want to share our technical expertise and work with the European Commission to establish appropriate safeguards and protect European citizens from privacy harm,” said Vassilvitskii.
Regulators will decide on 27 July 2026 on the specific measures Google must implement. Failure to do so could result in the company being charged with violating the Digital Markets Act (DMA), which aims to curb the power of big tech companies, and fined up to 10% of its global annual revenue.