5.8 Percent Saved Microsoft From Europe's Toughest Tech Law: Inside the Opera v Edge Gatekeeper Ruling

In Opera Norway AS v. European Commission (Case T-357/24), decided on 2 September 2026, the Eighth Chamber of the General Court of the European Union upheld the European Commission's decision not to designate Microsoft as a "gatekeeper" for its Edge browser under the Digital Markets Act, dismissing a challenge brought by rival browser maker Opera. Here is why a browser used in less than six out of every hundred web page views escaped Europe's toughest Big Tech regulation, and what the ruling teaches about how gatekeeper status actually gets decided.

Why a Small Browser Took On the Commission Over a Rival's Exemption

Opera Norway AS, the Oslo-based publisher of the Opera browser, brought this case not against Microsoft directly, but against the European Commission's own decision to leave Microsoft alone. Under the Digital Markets Act, a company designated as a gatekeeper for a particular service faces strict obligations, including showing users a mandatory, neutral choice screen for alternatives rather than defaulting them to the gatekeeper's own product. If Edge had been designated a gatekeeper, Windows users would have to be shown that choice screen, giving competitors like Opera a genuine shot at visibility on hundreds of millions of machines where Edge currently comes pre-installed. Without that designation, Opera argued, it was left to compete for attention it had no real chance of getting.

What "Gatekeeper" Status Under the DMA Actually Means

The Digital Markets Act sets out core criteria in Article 3(1) for gatekeeper status: a company must have a significant impact on the internal market, operate an important gateway connecting business users to end users, and hold an entrenched, durable market position. Articles 3(4) and 3(5) create a quantitative presumption of gatekeeper status once certain size and user-number thresholds are crossed. Article 3(8) allows the Commission to also weigh qualitative factors, such as network effects, lock-in, and switching costs, either to support designation or to rebut a presumption that would otherwise apply. This case turned on exactly how those two routes, quantitative and qualitative, are meant to interact.

The Numbers That Mattered

Back on 12 February 2024, the Commission had already decided not to designate Edge, even though it had initially met the quantitative thresholds that trigger a closer look. The reason came down to actual market position. Edge held just 5.8 percent of web page views across all device types in Europe in December 2022, compared to Chrome's 59 percent and Safari's 22 percent. The General Court rejected Opera's argument that comparing services this way was itself an impermissible form of market-share analysis, holding that this kind of comparison remains a legitimate tool under the regulation.

The Technical Twist: Microsoft's Own Browser Isn't Fully Microsoft's

One of the more striking findings in the judgment concerns what Edge is actually built on. Edge relies on the Blink rendering engine, the technology that determines how a browser displays web pages, which is managed by the Chromium open-source project rather than by Microsoft itself. The Court found this dependency significant: website owners had largely stopped bothering to ensure compatibility with Microsoft's own earlier, proprietary engine, effectively forcing Microsoft to switch to Blink to stay functional. Because any change Microsoft might want to make to Blink's underlying standards requires review and approval by a Chromium administrator, the Court concluded Microsoft lacks the kind of autonomous technical control over its own browser that gatekeeper status is meant to capture.

Why Pre-Installation and Default Settings Still Weren't Enough

The Court did not ignore Microsoft's real advantages. Edge comes pre-installed on Windows, set as the default browser, pinned to the taskbar, and given preferential access to Bing Chat. But it found these practices did not add up to decisive market power. Between 70 and 80 percent of Bing's average monthly search queries come through Edge, showing the ecosystem does funnel meaningful traffic. Yet Bing itself, even with that boost, captures only 3 to 5 percent of search queries across devices in Europe. If the strongest lever Microsoft has could only push its own search engine to single-digit market share, the Court reasoned, it could not be treated as strong enough to make Edge a gatekeeper either.

The Line the Court Drew

The judgment draws a firm line between the quantitative designation route under Articles 3(4) and 3(5) and the qualitative route under Article 3(8), treating them as related but distinct pathways to the same conclusion rather than a single blended test. The Court found that Opera had asserted the relevance of various qualitative factors, such as Edge's role as a download route for rival browsers, without adequately explaining why they should change the outcome, and had not shown that the Commission possessed evidence it deliberately chose to ignore.

What Happens Next

The General Court dismissed Opera's case entirely and ordered it to bear its own costs along with those of the Commission and Microsoft. Edge remains outside the Digital Markets Act's gatekeeper obligations for now, though Opera retains the right to appeal on points of law to the Court of Justice of the European Union within two months and ten days of notification.

The Indian Angle: Why This Case Travels Beyond Europe

India has been developing its own Digital Competition Bill, closely modeled on the EU's ex-ante approach in the Digital Markets Act, aimed at regulating systemically significant digital enterprises before anticompetitive harm occurs rather than case by case after the fact, which is how the existing Competition Act, 2002 largely operates. As Indian policymakers and the CCI look to international precedent while calibrating their own thresholds and designation criteria, this ruling is a useful illustration of where the real fight is likely to happen: not over a company's size or brand recognition, but over hard usage data and genuine technical control, which this judgment shows can cut in unexpected directions even for a company as large as Microsoft.

This blog is for general informational purposes and does not constitute legal advice. For guidance on competition law, digital markets regulation, or technology sector compliance, please contact our team.