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.”

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In 2021, a number of advertisers filed a class action lawsuit against Google, alleging that Google had abused its dominant position in digital advertising. The lawsuit was later dismissed by District Court Judge Beth Labson Freeman in San Jose, California.

But Freeman also preserved the plaintiffs’ opportunity to file another lawsuit. According to Freeman, the plaintiffs need to clarify which market they believe Google has monopolized; they also need to further explain why Google’s refusal to support a competitor’s advertising system is anti-competitive since antitrust law does not require the monopolist to assist a competitor’s survival.

In response to the amended class action filed by advertisers, Alphabet said the six advertisers who filed the class action cannot claim they were harmed by Google’s ad exchange because they did not participate in it.

Alphabet also said that five of the six advertisers waived their right to sue Google when they signed the terms of service. Instead, the terms call for binding arbitration to resolve the dispute.

For this reason, Alphabet asked the court to dismiss the advertisers’ lawsuit.

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