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EU Probes Big Tech Cloud Dominance
18 Nov
Summary
- EU investigates Amazon AWS and Microsoft Azure for market power.
- Probe assesses if cloud platforms act as business-to-consumer gateways.
- Investigation follows major industry outages highlighting reliance risks.
The European Commission is scrutinizing Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure, probing their significant market dominance. The investigation aims to determine if these cloud giants should fall under the Digital Markets Act, a set of rules designed to curb the power of large technology firms. This action follows a series of disruptive industry-wide outages.
Regulators will assess if AWS and Azure function as critical gateways between businesses and consumers and whether existing rules effectively address unfair or anti-competitive practices in the cloud sector. Recent incidents, including a 15-hour outage affecting hundreds of companies on AWS and disruptions on Microsoft Azure impacting airline check-ins and parliamentary votes, have amplified concerns.
The EU's probe is expected to conclude within 12 months, with a final decision on cloud sector regulation under the DMA anticipated within 18 months. Both Microsoft and Amazon have stated their readiness to cooperate with the commission's inquiry.
