Google has been hit with a new complaint under the European Union’s Digital Markets Act (DMA) by a coalition of five digital rights and privacy groups. The complaint, filed with the European Commission, accuses the company of restricting user choice on Android devices by making it difficult to remove or disable pre-installed apps, like Google Search, Chrome, and Maps.
According to the groups, this practice goes against the rules set by the DMA, which require large tech platforms to allow users to uninstall default services easily. The five organizations behind the complaint are European Digital Rights (EDRi), Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE), Gesellschaft für Freiheitsrechte (GFF), Homo Digitalis, and ARTICLE 19. They argue that Google, as a designated ‘gatekeeper’ under the DMA, has a legal duty to let users freely choose which apps and services to use.
However, these groups claim that on many Android devices, users face hidden settings, confusing instructions, and alarming warnings when trying to disable Google apps. These warnings often suggest that disabling certain apps might cause the system or other apps to stop working properly. The complainants describe such messages as misleading and designed to scare users into keeping the apps.
The complaint alleges that the Mountain View-headquartered company has deliberately designed its Android system in a way that keeps users locked into its own services. According to the groups, these choices make it harder for users to switch to other apps or services. Under the Digital Markets Act (DMA), large tech companies like Google are legally required to let users remove or switch away from core platform services without facing unnecessary hurdles. Notably, the DMA was passed in 2023 and began enforcement in 2024. It was created to limit the power of big digital platforms and make the online market fairer and more open to competition.
The development comes at a time when Alphabet (the parent company of Google) recently submitted its latest compliance report under the Digital Markets Act and held discussions with EU officials during a workshop organized by the European Commission on 1 July.
Meanwhile, the European Commission has confirmed that it received the complaint and will now review it under its enforcement process for the DMA. The Commission has the power to impose fines of up to 10% of a company’s global annual turnover and can force companies to change their product design or business practices to comply with the law. For example, in April this year, the Commission fined Apple and Meta €500 million and €200 million respectively for violations of the DMA.
The timing of this latest complaint becomes significant as the European Commission is already investigating Google’s role in advertising technology and its control over Android. The tech titan is also facing a separate antitrust complaint from a group of independent publishers, filed on June 30, 2025, alleging that its AI Overviews feature uses their content without permission.
