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Opera’s browser brawl hits a wall
Opera spent years poking at Microsoft’s browser behavior, and this time the EU courts weren’t in the mood for a plot twist. The General Court backed Brussels’ 2024 call to exempt Edge from Digital Markets Act gatekeeper rules, saying Edge doesn’t act like a critical gateway for businesses reaching consumers.
Why Microsoft gets to exhale
That matters because the DMA is Europe’s favorite big-tech leash. If a product gets tagged as a gatekeeper, the company running it has to live with a lot more restrictions and oversight. Here, judges basically said Microsoft’s argument that Edge doesn’t meet that bar was good enough.
Why investors should care
For Microsoft, this is one more notch in the “regulatory headache, but not a full-blown crisis” belt. It doesn’t change the company’s financial model overnight, but it does reduce one more legal overhang around a core Windows ecosystem product.
For Opera, it’s the kind of courtroom loss that stings twice: first in principle, then in the market. The stock was already under pressure, and the ruling doesn’t exactly scream “browser comeback season.”
Big picture: in big tech, sometimes the most important product feature is a good lawyer.