
MICROSOFT Corp.’s Azure and Amazon Web Services are on a collision course with the European Union’s tough digital competition rulebook, after an initial probe into their power over the cloud.
The European Commission is set to unveil its preliminary findings as early as next week, stating that AWS and Azure seem to meet the requirements to face the bloc’s Digital Markets Act, according to people familiar with the matter who spoke under condition of anonymity.
The people added that a final decision — after the early-stage findings — is expected by the end of this year but that timings could still change. Should the Big Tech services eventually face the full force of the law, they would face a range of obligations, including interoperability requirements and curbs on customer lock-in and self-preferencing.
The commission and Microsoft declined to comment. AWS didn’t immediately respond to a request.
The Brussels-based EU executive said last November that Microsoft and Amazon “occupy very strong positions” in the cloud market, and began a formal market investigation to determine whether the services should be hit by the DMA. The law — which includes a list of dos and don’ts for powerful companies enjoying so-called gatekeeper status — was intended to stop abusive conduct before its takes hold and allows digital giants to dominate markets.
But over recent months, the law has also drawn the ire of US President Donald Trump and complicated transatlantic trade talks. Apple Inc. and Meta have been the first recipients of financial penalties for allegedly breaching the law, with fines of €500 million ($573 million) and €200 million respectively.
The EU’s cloud market investigation in November came on the heels of several major outages in the industry that wrought havoc across global services, highlighting the risks of relying on a mere handful of players.
This included an episode in which Amazon’s reputation as a reliable provider of cloud services took a hit when an outage lasting some 15 hours disrupted the operations of hundreds of companies, ranging from Apple to McDonald’s Corp. to Epic Games Inc. Microsoft’s Azure similarly was hit by troubles in October that prevented people from checking in for Alaska Airlines flights and halted votes inside the Scottish Parliament. –BLOOMBERG
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