Aurélien Mähl 🇪🇺
Policy @ DuckDuckGo. Follow for Tintin memes and tech/competition policy (or both). Brussels | Berlin
- Zuckerberg says glasses that integrate Meta's AI tech are "going to be able to see what you see, hear what you hear, talk to you, and help you as you go about your day". I don't know for you but it just sent chills through my nerves. gizmodo.com/ai-that-unde...
- .@arcapde.bsky.social : "The Digital Omnibus proposal is bricolage" - disagreeing with the European Commission's rep insistence that the proposal's goal isn't to reduce privacy rights. #dataprotectionday
- Seen at EDPS Data Protection Day 🍪🔪
- Such an impressive drop in fertility in the world's most populous countries. One of the defining traits of this century.
- Why China’s women are having fewer babies - www.ft.com/content/8434... via @FT
- How could Zelensky not be bitter as he flew in from a freezing Kyiv, 4 years in the war? Sometimes it feels like Europe is accommodating itself with the dreadful "equilibrium" of this war. Sanctions are... www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQdm...
- ... easily evaded, cities are bombed. But "order comes from action; let's end this Groundhog Day."
- Not sure if Trump got confused or if the problem in fact got bigger, but he just talked about getting "Iceland" right now in Davos
- Remarkable speech by Mark Carney - worth watching youtu.be/dqtDxkuvUdM
- Reposted by Aurélien Mähl 🇪🇺Judge Mehta was wrong wrong wrong. Wrong. WRONG. www.theverge.com/ai-artificia...
- Les entreprises françaises, trop aidées ? Si on soustrait de leurs impôts les aides publiques, la France est toujours sur ce funeste podium : "La France était à la 3e place de l’UE pour les prélèvements nets des aides en % de leur valeur ajoutée, derrière... www.lesechos.fr/economie-fra...
- ...Chypre et la Suède (23,2 %), loin devant l’Allemagne (11,8 %)."
- Pretty cool year in review by @cloudflare.social radar.cloudflare.com/year-in-revi... Some interesting facts: - Snapchat and LinkedIn now outperforming X - Perplexity saw more traffic than Gemini in 2025 ...
- Search engine crawlers still top AI crawlers & AI search bots
- The Google crawling advantage in one image:
-
View full thread"But, AI..."
- "celebrating" the 10y anniversary soon
- Absolutely amazing chart from @peterkellner.bsky.social's piece in @thenewworldmag.bsky.social today: www.thenewworld.co.uk/peter-kellne...
- La AI-assisted search de DuckDuckGo est maintenant disponible en Français (+ Espagnol, Allemand, Néerlandais) ! Et comme toutes nos fonctionalités d'IA, cela reste optionel, privé et utile.
- Reposted by Aurélien Mähl 🇪🇺Brexit should have been a lesson. It's a misunderstanding of sovereignty. Individual countries that are not China or the US have to follow the rules set by major powers as they have no bargaining power. Only together European countries are strong.
- Welcomed explainer from @signal.org's president about last week's serious AWS-related incident. The concentration of infrastructure / resources among "hyperscalers" she points to is reminiscent to what exists with web search infrastructure.
- When it comes to web search, #GenAI looks more like a format shift within search than an external disruptive entrant; incumbents, especially Google, are positioned to absorb and dominate it. Without stronger interventions beyond... www.promarket.org/2025/10/20/w...
- ...curbing exclusivity, GenAI alone as market force is unlikely to break Google’s search dominance. More by Mihir Kshirsagar ⬆️
- Just like Google managed to cement dominance on browser and then mobile, its control over distribution points & data advantage is set to reproduce the same w/ AI. It's a call for meaningful policy interventions, but also a call for the plurality of competitors to expand & deepen their partnerships
- 🆕✍️ Is consumer AI heading for a duopoly? gabrielweinberg.com/p/consumer-a...
- Reposted by Aurélien Mähl 🇪🇺my latest for @techpolicypress.bsky.social on the US v. Google search antitrust case and just how badly the court missed the opportunity to contend with Google’s power in the genAI market. genAI won’t magically unseat Google’s market dominance, as the court suggests, it will only deepen it
- How the DuckDuckGo browser bridges search, web browsing and AI ⬇️ gabrielweinberg.com/p/the-overlo...
- Recommended read by @alissacooper.bsky.social: www.techpolicy.press/without-a-pa... "If concerns raised about the inadequacy of the [data sharing] remedy are demonstrated through the failure of competition to take hold, the manner and timeliness for...
- ...Judge Mehta’s willingness to reopen and review the default payment issues will become critical."
- I posted a couple times about how DuckDuckGo uniquely integrates AI answers to the search experience. But you better actually hear directly from Tim, one of those making the magic internally. "Search Assist is "unique in that way across the AI answers industry, in that it...
- ... really tries to get the job done in a very short amount of words. But users for some queries were asking it to go deeper on topics, and that's the answer to the "More" button question." Here's, well, more ⬇️ insideduckduckgo.substack.com/p/duck-tales...
- "National champions are too often national chokepoints" - speech by AAG Gail Slater at the Georgetown antitrust enforcement symposium www.justice.gov/opa/speech/a...
- "All the privacy debates surrounding Google search results from the past two decades apply one-for-one to AI chats, but to an even greater degree. That’s why we started offering Duck.ai for protected chatbot conversations and optional, anonymous AI-assisted answers in our private search engine."
- 🆕✍️ AI surveillance should be banned while there is still time. All the same privacy harms with online tracking are also present with AI, but worse. gabrielweinberg.com/p/ai-surveil...
- "la vérité est que, sans produire davantage de richesses, la dette ne permettra plus de soutenir notre niveau de vie et de maintenir à flot notre système de protection sociale." @stephanelauer.bsky.social www.lemonde.fr/idees/articl...
- Reposted by Aurélien Mähl 🇪🇺"Google's abusive behaviour...had a negative impact on all European citizens in their day-to-day use of the web"
- Reposted by Aurélien Mähl 🇪🇺The impact of those has been negligible (less than 1% change in Google’s market share) because the OEMs’ total dependence on Android to operate in the market rendered the contractual changes impotent. That dependence is as strong in the US as it is in the EU, so we can expect the same result.
- Reposted by Aurélien Mähl 🇪🇺At KGI we think a lot about concrete evidence. Seven years ago, the European Commission instituted contractual prohibitions in its Google Android case that were of a similar nature to those included by the court here.
- Reposted by Aurélien Mähl 🇪🇺After issuing a liability decision that relied extensively on claims about both the power of defaults and the size of Google’s revenue share payments, the court’s opinion does nothing to prevent Google from continuing to pay distributors for defaults.
- The recently published UK's CMA provisional decision to regulate Google search is making that point eloquently: AI *is* impacting usages, but the underlying competitive dynamics remain. Google's key platform & data assets are more critical than ever in the AI era.
- DuckDuckGo's comments on the CMA's provisional decision is here assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/68a5aa...
- Reposted by Aurélien Mähl 🇪🇺J'ai signé la pétition pour appeler le gouvernement français (quand on en aura un) à mettre en œuvre l’initiative "Skyshield". C'est ici: shorturl.at/42Rr5 Il y a bien sûr l'aspect humanitaire. Mais il en va aussi de la défense des intérêts européens. 1/
- There's a cognitive dissonance between the finding of monopolization and what the same judge says should be done against it. On the data sharing side, some remedies were approved but with lots of caveats. Hard to see how they will be of any practical use.
- Here's what our CEO Gabriel Weinberg had to say about yesterday's US judgment: "We do not believe the remedies ordered by the court will force the changes necessary to adequately address Google’s illegal behavior. Google will still be allowed to continue to use its monopoly to...
- ...hold back competitors, including in AI search. As a result, consumers will continue to suffer. We believe Congress should now step in to swiftly make Google do the thing it fears the most: compete on a level playing field."
- The Commission is giving antitrust law / DMA offenders a license to trespass the rules, with these sort of moves. What message does it send to those many businesses - European and foreign - investing and employing in Europe and being harmed by these abuses?
- Swallowing a decrease of tariffs on industrial goods while the EU's get hiked up is already tough enough (and might not even pass the EP). So the EC has little choice but to react the way Ribera does. But it might inhibit the actual investigations, and that's maybe the effect that's wanted.
- The verdict in US v Google should drop any day now. From @superwuster.bsky.social : "The bigger stakes & larger target of the case have always been the broader ecosystem of information retrieval, which is destined to be shaped by newer technologies like chatbots & AI" www.nytimes.com/2025/08/26/o...
- Just watched "Burn After Reading", the movie from 2008. I thought everything looked old. At some point some idiots in the movie try and leak (actually useless) CIA intel to the Russian embassy. In the attaché's office, a portrait of Vladimir Putin hangs at the wall...💀
- Me facing the CMA reports published right before the holidays
- Open Letter from Kush & Linda at @mozilla.org: "We have already seen the impact the EU DMA can have for consumers. The DMCCA has the potential to be even more effective, giving the UK “second mover advantage” with flexible and targeted interventions." blog.mozilla.org/netpolicy/20...
