When Microsoft’s browser was the gateway to the Web

There was a time when Microsoft’s browser was almost synonymous with the Internet itself. Internet Explorer dominated the market, came pre-installed on Windows PCs and served as the near-mandatory gateway to the web for millions of users and businesses. That position defined a crucial era in digital competition and ultimately became one of the emblematic chapters in the confrontation between Microsoft and Europe’s competition authorities (Super Mario was on the lead, in the Brussels’ side).

Today, the picture is radically different. Microsoft Edge, Internet Explorer’s successor, has not been designated as a “gatekeeper” under the Digital Markets Act (“DMA”), the European regulation intended to ensure fair and contestable digital markets in the EU. The European Commission had already declined to designate Edge in February 2024 and now the EU General Court has fully upheld that decision, dismissing the action brought by Opera Norway, the company behind the Opera browser.

The case reflects an industrial transformation before it is a legal one. A company whose browser once stood at the centre of its digital power no longer holds, through Edge, a position that makes its browser a decisive intermediary between businesses and users. It is a useful reminder that genuine innovation can redraw hierarchies that once appeared settled in technology markets. Innovation is not established by press releases or strategic plans alone (unlike what is believed by some CEOs in the telco sector). What matters is the product itself, its ability to win users, the quality of the experience it provides and the real competitive strength of the ecosystem in which it operates. 

Thresholds are not an automatic verdict

The most interesting legal aspect of the judgment concerns the way the DMA operates. Microsoft had met the quantitative thresholds which, in principle, give rise to a presumption of gatekeeper status. In other words, the Regulation relies on objective indicators relating to an undertaking’s size and market impact in order to identify platforms that warrant closer scrutiny.

Those thresholds, however, do not amount to a blind or irrebuttable rule. The DMA allows the undertaking concerned to submit sufficiently substantiated arguments showing that, despite the figures, the service does not in practice constitute an “important gateway” between business users and end users. That is what happened in the case of Edge: the Commission’s assessment found that Microsoft had successfully rebutted the presumption and the General Court held that conclusion to be lawful.

This is also a useful clarification in the recurring political debate over Europe’s alleged over-regulation. The DMA is undoubtedly an ambitious intervention. It imposes specific obligations on the largest online platforms, especially those headquartered in the United States. But it is not a bureaucratic machine applying labels without regard to market reality. On the contrary, the judgment demonstrates that the quantitative criteria are the beginning rather than the end of the analysis. They identify cases in which there is a strong presumption of intermediation power, while preserving room for rebuttal evidence and a fact-specific economic assessment.

Edge: not a sufficiently decisive gateway

According to the General Court, the Commission was right to consider Edge’s actual scale of use and to compare it with that of other browsers. It was therefore not enough to observe that Edge belongs to the Microsoft ecosystem or is (merely) available on a large number of Windows PCs. The relevant question was whether Edge was genuinely widely used and sufficiently important for businesses seeking to reach end users.

The Commission’s assessment relied primarily on European usage data for the 2020–2022 period, supplemented by the market investigation conducted in 2023. Over that period, Edge accounted on average for only 3.9% of web-page views in Europe, while in December 2022 it stood at 5.8%, still far behind Chrome and Safari. It was this concrete picture of the market – rather than the memory of Internet Explorer’s former centrality – that led Brussels to conclude that Edge did not constitute a decisive gateway to end users.

In this respect, the notion of gatekeeper is not synonymous with being a very large technology company, nor with offering highly visible software. It requires an effective, stable and significant intermediation function: the ability to become, for businesses and users alike, an almost unavoidable route, or at least a particularly important one, through which access takes place.

The decision is significant because it gives priority to how the market actually functions over formal appearances. Microsoft remains a technology giant, Windows remains a major operating system and Edge is pre-installed within that ecosystem. Yet none of these facts, viewed in isolation, was sufficient to make Edge a gatekeeper under the DMA.

Pre-installation and technological control

The judgment also considers two features that might have pointed towards the opposite conclusion: Edge’s pre-installation on Windows and its integration into the Microsoft ecosystem. The General Court acknowledged that these factors are relevant. A browser offered by default on one of the world’s principal operating systems can plainly enjoy a substantial competitive advantage.

In the specific circumstances of the case, however, the Commission was entitled to find that those advantages were not sufficient. Pre-installation, promotion and ecosystem integration are elements to be assessed, as they are not shortcuts that displace the analysis of the service’s actual centrality. The distinction matters: a company may seek to influence users’ choices, but that effort does not automatically establish that the product has become an indispensable gateway for the market.

The General Court also held that the Commission was entitled to take account of Edge’s reliance on Blink, the rendering engine also used by Google Chrome and developed within the Chromium project. On the assessment upheld by the Court, that reliance reduces Microsoft’s ability to exercise autonomous control over certain essential aspects of the service. The technological architecture of a product can therefore matter in the regulatory analysis: it is not only the undertaking that distributes a product that counts, but also the undertaking that genuinely controls its decisive technical components.

A contingent decision, not a Safe Harbour

The judgment does not, however, provide Edge – or Microsoft – with a permanent exemption from the DMA. The Commission assessed the facts available during the relevant period: the browser’s reach, its effective role as a route to users, the weight of the Microsoft ecosystem and Microsoft’s degree of control over the underlying technology. If those factors were to change materially, the Commission’s assessment could change as well.

A significant increase in Edge’s usage, a more central role for the browser in accessing digital services, new forms of integration with Windows or AI-enabled tools or greater Microsoft control over the technological components of the service could all lead to a different competition assessment. The DMA does not establish a once-and-for-all ranking of technology’s winners and losers. Rather, it seeks to follow the evolution of market power as markets and technologies change.

That is perhaps the most interesting lesson of the case. Europe did not treat Microsoft as a gatekeeper merely because its name remains historically associated with browser dominance. It looked at what Edge is today, rather than what Internet Explorer was yesterday. In a sector where real innovation can overturn positions that once seemed unassailable, that is not a minor point. It is the right way to regulate.