Microsoft escapes European legislative obligations on Bing and its Edge browser

Not popular enough to be affected by the DMAthe search engine Bing And the Edge browser will escape European obligations. But not all of Microsoft.

It’s a Pyrrhic victory that Microsoft has just won. According to information obtained by the Bloomberg newspaper, the Bing search engine and the Edge browser will not have to comply with European obligations dictated by the Digital Markets Acts (DMA), because these software are simply not popular enough among users of the old continent.

Google’s dominance benefits Microsoft

The DMA provides that platforms with more than 45 million users in the EU per month (and 10,000 professionals per year for the last three years) will be labeled as “gatekeepers” and subject to strict constraints. But neither the browser published by the firm nor its search engine meet these conditions according to Brussels. Ergo, everything continues as before.

This means that Bing, and its 3.75% market share in Europe, will be able to continue to report results which favor its own services (Bing Chat, Bing Maps, etc.), unlike Google which has had to carry out adjustments on this point. The same goes for Edge (which has less than 6% market share in Europe), which will be able to continue to offer software made in Microsoft within its interface.

LinkedIn and Windows still affected

On the other hand, if these services are spared by Brussels, Microsoft will still have to obey the DMA on other aspects of its business. On Windows (which has a 74.5% market share on desktop OS), it will be possible to uninstall the Edge browser and the integration of Bing within the search results.

The difference is certainly subtle between Windows’ obligation to authorize the uninstallation of these services and the authorization for Microsoft to continue to push its in-house solutions within these same software, but it is due to the definition of “data controllers”. access” adopted by Brussels. Windows is one, not Edge or Bing. Note that LinkedIn (which has belonged to the company since 2016) will also be affected by the new DMA rules.

Since last October, Microsoft has been agitating behind the scenes to obtain an exemption for its software and the European Commission would, it seems, agree with the Redmond giant. A 5-month investigation launched at the end of last year should give its results at the end of February, but the first returns therefore seem to spare Microsoft. Edge and Bing will therefore probably join Apple’s iMessage service in the clan of software not trendy enough to attract the attention of the EU.

Source : Bloomberg