Anti-competitive cloud business? FTC plans to investigate Microsoft
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) wants to investigate whether Microsoft is engaging in anti-competitive practices in its cloud business.
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In the final weeks of the Biden presidency, the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) wants to launch an investigation into Microsoft: Circles within the authority say that there are possible indications of anti-competitive practices in Microsoft's cloud business. In the FTC's view, there are some contractual clauses in the licenses of Microsoft's Azure platform that are intended to have a "punitive" effect on customers who decide to switch to another provider. Microsoft is trying to prevent its Azure customers from doing so, says the FTC.
The Financial Times first reported on this on Thursday. If customers decide to switch, Microsoft would first drastically increase the subscription fees and also charge high termination fees, according to FTC sources. Furthermore, the company would make its Microsoft365 applications incompatible with the clouds of other providers, says the FTC. However, a request to Microsoft for relevant documents or other information is still pending. The news agency Reuters asked both the FTC and Microsoft for a statement on Thursday –, but both parties declined.
FTC has Big Tech in its sights – yet
Microsoft would be the next case in a series of big tech companies that the FTC has scrutinized under the leadership of acting chief Lina Khan. The final report of an FTC investigation recently revealed the extent to which many online platforms use their users' personal data to make money, particularly through targeted advertising. Amazon and its subsidiary Twitch, Meta with Facebook and WhatsApp, Google's YouTube, Twitter (X), Snap, the Chinese TikTok parent company ByteDance, Discord and Reddit were affected. With the change of US president, however, Democrat Khan is expected to step down as head of the FTC. The winner of the US presidential election and Republican Donald Trump is likely to focus on significantly less state regulation in his next term of office.
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