Microsoft Edge will remain outside the European Union's most demanding digital rulebook after the bloc's General Court rejected a challenge by the Norwegian browser company Opera. The ruling, issued on Wednesday in Luxembourg, means the European Commission was within its rights to decide that Edge does not constitute an important gateway between businesses and consumers, even though the browser meets the Digital Markets Act's quantitative thresholds for user numbers.

The judgment in Case T-357/24 settles a dispute that began when Opera sought to overturn a Commission decision from February 2024. That decision had closed an investigation into Microsoft by accepting the company's contention that Edge, despite its user base, did not function as a gateway that business users depend on to reach end users. The General Court agreed, ruling that the Commission had not erred in accepting Microsoft's arguments.

Hitting the numbers is not enough

The Digital Markets Act was designed with two layers of scrutiny. A service must first cross quantitative thresholds, specifically at least 45 million monthly end users and 10,000 yearly business users in the EU, to come under consideration. But crossing those thresholds does not guarantee designation. The Commission must then assess whether the service acts as an important gateway, a qualitative judgment that gives regulators room to weigh the actual role a product plays in the market.

Edge satisfied the numerical test. That much was not in dispute. The question before the court was whether the Commission had properly exercised its qualitative judgment in deciding that Edge was not a gateway. The court concluded it had. The practical consequence is straightforward: competitors who believe the Commission has been too lenient in applying the gateway test will find it hard to persuade judges otherwise.

Opera's case about pre-installed browsers

Opera filed its action for annulment in July 2024, arguing that the Commission had misapplied the designation test and failed to examine what Opera considered the decisive issue. The Norwegian company's case rested on the position of Edge within Windows. Because Edge comes pre-installed on the dominant desktop operating system, Opera contended it occupies a "durable and privileged position on Windows" that the Commission had not adequately assessed.

The argument drew a direct line from Edge back to Internet Explorer. Opera told the court that Edge, like its predecessor, functions as the gatekeeper through which users on Windows must pass to download a rival browser. The pre-installed browser, in Opera's framing, is a chokepoint regardless of how many users subsequently switch to Chrome or Firefox. The logic had a broader ambition: Opera wanted desktop operating systems brought more fully within the DMA's scope. Most of the regulation's browser-related remedies, including the choice screens that reshaped the mobile market, have been directed at smartphones. Opera sought the same principle applied to Windows.

The court was not convinced. Its conclusion was blunt: the Commission's decision not to designate Edge would stand.

Microsoft's partial designation

Microsoft is not outside the DMA entirely. The same February 2024 investigation that spared Edge also designated Windows and LinkedIn as core platform services. Those products must comply with the regulation's obligations, which include prohibitions on self-preferencing and requirements to allow users to uninstall software and set third-party defaults. Serious breaches can attract fines of up to 10 per cent of global turnover.

Three other Microsoft services, Edge, Bing and Microsoft Advertising, escaped designation. That split outcome illustrates how the DMA treats each core platform service as a separate question, even when they sit within the same corporate group. Microsoft and Apple both pushed to keep certain services off the list during the same round of investigations. Apple lost its own General Court challenge against the designation of iMessage. The Edge ruling now demonstrates that the court will also support the Commission when it decides not to designate a service, a point that may reassure companies worried about overreach.

A nineteen-year rivalry with a different outcome

Opera's attempt to bring Edge under the DMA carries a historical echo. In 2007, Opera filed a complaint with the Commission alleging that Microsoft's bundling of Internet Explorer with Windows violated EU competition rules. That complaint contributed to the Commission's 2009 decision requiring Microsoft to offer European users a choice of browsers through a ballot screen. When Microsoft dropped that ballot screen in 2011 without informing regulators, the Commission imposed a €561 million fine in 2013.

The contrast with Wednesday's ruling is sharp. Nineteen years after Opera first used EU competition law against Microsoft's browser dominance, the same company has failed to get a newer and more targeted piece of legislation applied to the same product category. The regulatory framework has changed, and so has the result. Where competition law treated browser bundling as an abuse of market power, the DMA asks a different question: does the service function as a gateway? The court's answer, at least for Edge, was no.

The political backdrop

The judgment lands at an awkward moment for Brussels. A European browser maker has asked EU judges to expand the bloc's digital rules against an American technology company and lost. At the same time, the Commission faces sustained pressure from Washington over its enforcement of the DMA, which American officials have characterised as unfairly targeting US firms.

The Commission can point to the Edge decision as evidence of proportionate enforcement: it is willing to decline designation when the evidence does not support it. Critics can point to the same decision as evidence that the regulation is not reaching services that shape how Europeans access the internet. Both readings are defensible, and both will be deployed as the political argument over the DMA continues.

Enforcement continues regardless

The broader DMA enforcement effort has not paused for this case. The Commission is examining whether Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure should be designated as cloud gatekeepers, a question that could prove more consequential than the browser dispute. It has also issued its first DMA penalty, an €890 million fine against Google.

Those cases will test the regulation's reach in areas where market concentration is more widely acknowledged than it is in the browser market, where Chrome dominates across all operating systems and Edge's market share remains modest. The cloud investigation, in particular, could reshape how European businesses procure infrastructure from the largest providers.

Organisations

European Commission · Microsoft · Opera · General Court of the European Union