According to Reuters reports, the British CMA regulator is currently launching an investigation into a series of cloud service providers, including Microsoft, Amazon, and Google.
The UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) is close to passing on Microsoft’s Activision Blizzard acquisition, but is said to be “soon turning its relevant attention to Microsoft’s Azure cloud offering and Amazon’s AWS cloud computing service.”
▲ Image Source Reuters
This is said to be an investigation into cloud providers in the UK market, after telecoms regulator Ofcom claimed that there was a monopoly problem with cloud providers in the UK market, with “some cloud providers employing a variety of mechanisms to make it more difficult for customers to switch and switch to services offered by other cloud providers”.
Ofcom argued that customers of some cloud providers have to pay to move data out of the cloud, and some offer discounts to force dependency, so the organization asked the CMA to investigate.
After inquiries that in 2022 Microsoft Azure and Amazon AWS cloud services, took 70% – 80% of the UK market.
However, the CMA’s market investigation will take 18 months to complete, with a statutory deadline of April 4, 2025, Reuters said. The U.K. regulator will outline a “theory of harm” as well as “any potential remedies that may be available to address the situation”. The U.K. regulator also has the power to “require the companies involved to sell part of their business to prevent monopolization.”
