“US competition authorities investigate whether MS Cloud ‘anti-competitive practices’”

US competition authorities It has been reported that an investigation into anti-competitive practices in Microsoft’s cloud business will be launched.

According to major foreign news outlets on the 14th (local time), the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is looking into allegations that Microsoft abused its market power by imposing punitive conditions to prevent customers of its cloud service, Azure, from moving to other competing platforms. there is. Punitive conditions include significantly raising subscription fees or charging high exit fees to customers who leave Microsoft’s cloud services, and making its Microsoft 365 productivity software product incompatible with competing clouds.

It is reported that the FTC plans to decide whether to conduct an official investigation after considering opinions from industry officials and consumers about Microsoft’s business practices.

Previously, Microsoft had been reported for antitrust violations by competitors due to similar suspicions. Google said last September that Microsoft Microsoft filed a complaint with the European Commission (EU) claiming that it is restricting competition in the cloud computing market by using an unfair licensing agreement in the form of a penalty, causing enormous damage to European companies and governments.

In November 2022, the ‘Association of Cloud Infrastructure Service Providers in Europe (CISPE)’, an industry organization whose members include Amazon, will It also submitted a report to the European Commission, claiming that Microsoft’s cloud contract terms constitute a violation of competition law. but CISPE withdrew its report last July when Microsoft agreed to pay 22 million euros (about 32.8 billion won) individually.

In the cloud market, fierce competition is taking place between Amazon Web Services (AWS), the cloud division of Amazon, the world’s largest e-commerce company, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud. According to market research firm Synergy Research Group, Amazon accounted for 32% of the global cloud market share in the second quarter, Microsoft accounted for 23%, and Google accounted for 12%.

MS’s market share was once far behind that of Amazon, which ranked first in market share, by more than 20%, but it is increasing its cloud market share by joining hands with ChatGPT developer OpenAI and incorporating artificial intelligence (AI) into its products faster than its competitors. MS signed a partnership with startup OpenAI in 2019 and invested $13 billion as of last year. In return, Microsoft received exclusive rights to run the OpenAI model on its cloud platform, Azure.

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