"U.S. Regulators Investigate MS Cloud 'Anti-competitive Practices'

U.S. regulators are preparing to investigate whether Microsoft's cloud business division has anti-competitive practices, the Financial Times reported.

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is reportedly looking into allegations that Microsoft abused its market dominance in productivity software and imposed punitive conditions to prevent its cloud service "Azer" customers from moving to other companies.

Punitive conditions include significantly increasing subscription fees for customers leaving MS cloud services, charging high withdrawal fees, and making productivity software MS 365 products incompatible with competing clouds.

However, it is known that the FTC has not yet officially requested related documents or information from MS.Amazon Web Services (AWS), the cloud division of Amazon, the world's largest e-commerce company, and Microsoft's Azure and Google Cloud are competing fiercely in the

cloud market.

According to market research firm Synergy Research Group, Amazon accounted for 32% of the global cloud market in the second quarter, Microsoft 23% and Google 12%.

Microsoft's market share was once far behind Amazon by more than 20%, but it is chasing the gap by narrowing it to single digits.