Google published the terms, the eligibility test and the dates for handing its European search data to rival answer engines, two days after the EU formally classified ChatGPT as one.

Google expanded its documentation for the European Search Dataset Licensing Program, the mechanism that implements the European Commission's binding Digital Markets Act decision of 16 July 2026. The dataset is described as "ranking, query, click, and view data from Google Search in the European Economic Area (EEA)."

The eligibility test is now written down. An applicant "must qualify as a provider of an online search engine as defined in Art. 2(6) DMA", must target EEA users, must have at least 50,000 monthly average users in the EU, must not be controlled by a non-EEA state actor or be under EU sanctions, and must either have operated the service in the EU for two consecutive years or have received more than 50 million euros in capital investment. Sharing is on FRAND terms with anonymisation.

The calendar is short. Licensing agreements become available on 17 September 2026 and data samples on 16 November 2026. Google is also required to maintain a public page listing every third-party search engine that takes the data.

Microsoft is testing removing the site name from Bing web search results and showing only the site's URL in its place. It was spotted by Sachin Patel. Google ran a similar test roughly a year ago. The report covers Bing web results only and makes no claim about Copilot.