The European Court of Justice upholds the Commission’s decision not to designate the Edge browser as a gatekeeper, despite a complaint from Opera.
Microsoft’s Edge browser will not receive ‘gatekeeper’ status under the DMA. The European Commission already decided this in 2024, and it has now been reaffirmed by the European Court of Justice. With this ruling, the court dismisses a complaint from the Norwegian browser Opera.
Opera took legal action due to Edge’s privileged position within Windows. Edge is the default browser in Windows, meaning every Windows user must open Edge at least once to install another browser. Attachments and links in other Windows and Microsoft applications also always direct you to Edge, unless changed manually.
Insufficient market share
Normally, such practices would be enough to attract the attention of the European Commission, but Edge has managed to escape scrutiny. The decision primarily considered the browser’s limited market share in Europe. Edge has a market share of over six percent in the EU, which is only a tenth of market leader Google Chrome.
According to the European Commission, the integration of Edge into Windows has had no impact on Edge’s market share. Because Windows does have gatekeeper status, Microsoft had to make several changes in the EU, such as the option to uninstall the browser. An additional argument is that the engine behind Edge, Chromium, is not controlled by Microsoft.
The Court of Justice ruled that no substantial arguments have been presented to overturn the decision. The Bing search engine also remains exempt from this to date. ChatGPT recently received a ‘promotion’ under the DSA legislation.