SINGAPORE - Google will make changes to its products to comply with upcoming regulations in the European Union (EU) and elsewhere, its chief executive Sundar Pichai said during a roundtable session with international media.

As digital technology and the Internet have matured and become a deeper part of people's lives, all countries are rightfully thinking about the right digital regulations, Mr Pichai said last week.

"They want to protect their citizens and make sure their norms are applied; we see that as a natural evolution," he added.

At the same time, Mr Pichai noted the need to balance regulators' concerns with ensuring the Internet works smoothly, is easy to use, and does not become overly cumbersome. "We all see the benefits of a free, open and interoperable Internet, which allows for free flow of ideas, for economies to be interconnected, and so on. Both are important aspects of this and I think there has got to be a balance," he said.

Mr Pichai's comments come after EU lawmakers last month reached a deal to pass new legislation which will impose new obligations on platform operators such as Google, which owns YouTube, and Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp.

The Digital Services Act, which has yet to come into effect, is intended to address societal harms on such platforms by requiring the companies to proactively remove illegal content like hate speech and terrorist propaganda or risk heavy fines.

In March, the European Parliament also agreed on another legislation aimed at ending anti-competitive policies by Google and Apple, among others, such as restricting device users to proprietary app marketplaces like Apple's App Store.

Mr Pichai said Google has already done significant work on responding to and anticipating such regulatory changes, for instance, ahead of the EU's landmark General Data Protection Regulation privacy and security law that came into effect in 2018.

"For example, if you take an area like Google Play, we've been thinking hard about what kind of changes we can make," he said. "Some of it is to address regulatory concerns, some of it is to address developer concerns, and we are evolving and doing what we can."

Asked to elaborate on Mr Pichai's remarks, a Google spokesman told The Straits Times it had lowered the service fee for all subscriptions on Google Play from 30 per cent to 15 per cent after listening to developers' feedback.

Google has also been working on allowing additional billing options alongside the Google Play billing system for users in South Korea. The spokesman said: "We announced in March 2022 that we are partnering developers to explore different implementations of user-choice billing, starting with Spotify."

Last August, South Korea amended its Telecommunications Business Act and became the first country in the world to ban major app store operators from requiring developers to use their payment systems.

Another area that will impact big tech firms in the coming years is the growing interest in data sovereignty - the notion that data should be subject to the laws of the country in which it is collected.

Many governments are exploring new regulation of data created by and belonging to their citizens, such as restrictions on the kind of data that can be moved to and stored in servers outside the country's jurisdiction.

Mr Pichai said Google Cloud is already supporting data sovereignty in some countries. Last October, the company announced new data sovereignty controls for EU customers.

"The balance to get right in all of this, is that we don't make the Internet too cumbersome and lose what's good about it," he said.

"Sometimes, we speak up because we worry about unintended consequences. We have our own interests as a company, of course, but we do care about the Internet working well as well."

Google will also accelerate efforts to combat misinformation on YouTube, especially in languages other than English, and artificial intelligence will play an important role in these efforts, Mr Pichai said.

He cited a recent US$10 million (S$13.7 million) investment to fight misinformation in Europe related to the Russia-Ukraine war, which he had previously announced in a blog post on March 29.