Google filed two appeals at the EU General Court in Luxembourg on Monday to block orders that would force it to share search data with competitors and open Android to rival AI assistants — and while Europe at least tries to break Big Tech's grip, American regulators offer nothing but talk.

The July rulings came down under the European Commission's Digital Markets Act, the EU's rulebook for reining in the biggest tech gatekeepers. These aren't fines. They're step-by-step instructions on how Google must comply with rules it's already supposed to follow. By January 2027, Google would have to give competing search engines — including AI chatbots — access to data about what people search for and click on. By August 2027, third-party AI assistants would get the same access as Google's own Gemini to 11 core Android features, including voice activation and in-app actions.

Google's argument? Privacy. Oliver Bethell, the company's senior director of competition, told Bloomberg that sharing user search data "would cause irreversible harm to user privacy." Google also claims opening Android to rivals could reduce the operating system's security.

This from the company that built an empire harvesting user data across every surface of the internet. The privacy shield is convenient cover for what's really at stake: Google's dominance in search and mobile operating systems. Open those gardens and the competitive advantage evaporates.

The European Commission isn't buying it. Regulators say both orders were designed with privacy protections built in, including anonymization measures crafted with input from privacy experts. Google also retains the right to refuse data sharing to any company that poses a serious security or privacy threat. DuckDuckGo, the privacy-focused search engine that doesn't track users, backed the Commission. A spokesperson said the anonymization rules are sound and that Google's appeal will only buy time.

TNW laid out the Commission's safeguards and DuckDuckGo's rebuttal clearly; The Verge focused almost exclusively on Google's privacy framing and gave the regulator's counterarguments a pass.

But the real story isn't just what's happening in Luxembourg. It's what isn't happening in Washington. The EU's DMA is an aggressive attempt to pry open digital monopolies by force of law. Meanwhile, American antitrust enforcement against Big Tech has produced years of hearings, splashy lawsuits, and virtually nothing that changes the market structure ordinary Americans deal with every day. Google still controls roughly 90 percent of search. Android still powers the vast majority of the world's smartphones. Every month of inaction is another month of monopoly rents collected.

Follow the money on U.S. inaction and you'll find a lobbying operation that spends tens of millions a year, a revolving door between Silicon Valley and federal agencies, and a bipartisan consensus that talks tough on Big Tech while delivering nothing enforceable. Both parties campaign on cracking down. Neither delivers.

The question isn't whether the EU's approach is perfect. It's whether anyone in Washington has the will to try anything at all — or whether American consumers will keep waiting for competition that never comes.