SIGNAL
The mobile platform fight has a new surface. After two decades of contesting browsers, app stores, and search, the European Commission has now reached the AI-assistant layer of the phone, the place where the default voice, the default summarizer, and the default multi-step task runner live.
The default-assistant moat is what is being contested. When Apple publicly aligns with Google against the order Walker described, the contested asset is structural. The companies disagree on many things. They agree on this.
The mechanism is portable to the next case. Regulators tend to open the layer closest to the user's first action. The browser was the first-action layer of the PC internet. The search box was the first-action layer of the mobile web. The voice-wake assistant is becoming the first-action layer of the AI-native phone. Wherever the first action lives, the gatekeeper obligation follows.
The 2027 deadlines will tell us whether the surface actually opens. If the choice screen is buried in setup, or the default never actually changes, the moat survives intact. If users pick another assistant and keep it, the moat becomes a toll booth. The pattern in either case is the same: the OS-level default is the new interoperability front.
Reported by Sky for Type0, from The DMA should not undercut security & privacy for Europeans. Read the original: blog.google