The EU ends its DMA investigation into iMessage and Microsoft Bing, Edge, and Advertising, deciding not to regulate the services due to their lack of dominance
- Services not dominant enough to face Digital Markets Act … A probe concluded that the services don't hold a dominant enough position …
Context & Ripple Effects
The decision formalizes a direction signaled when the EU tentatively moved to exempt Bing, Edge, and Microsoft Advertising and when reporting indicated iMessage was unlikely to qualify under the DMA’s business-user test. Apple and Microsoft had argued that the services lacked the reach required for gatekeeper designation.
It draws a practical boundary around a law designed to curb platform-gatekeeper leverage: lawmakers had built the DMA to require measures including messaging interoperability and limits on self-preferencing. The outcome shows that those obligations attach service by service rather than automatically across a company’s product portfolio.
First-order effects
- iMessage, Bing, Edge, and Microsoft Advertising avoid DMA obligations associated with gatekeeper status, leaving Apple and Microsoft without mandated changes to those named services under this investigation.
- The EU closes the uncertainty created by its customer-and-competitor information gathering, whose focus included whether iMessage and Bing warranted regulation.
Second-order effects
- Competitors seeking DMA-enabled access or interoperability in these services have less basis to expect it from this designation process; their competitive strategies remain governed by the services’ existing market positions.
- Apple and Microsoft can concentrate DMA compliance work on any services that are designated, rather than extending the same remedies across iMessage, Bing, Edge, or Microsoft Advertising.
Third-order effects
- The decision reinforces a threshold-based enforcement model: the DMA can constrain a large company’s designated services while leaving adjacent products outside its obligations when they do not meet the gatekeeper test.
- As platforms add or bundle adjacent services, regulatory disputes may increasingly turn on service-level evidence of business-user dependence and market position, rather than corporate scale alone.
The trend: EU digital-market enforcement is moving toward service-specific gatekeeper assessments, with the strongest interoperability and conduct remedies focused on demonstrably entrenched platform choke points.