Amazon’s (AMZN) Amazon Web Services and Microsoft’s (MSFT) Azure are facing fresh regulatory pressure as the European Commission has opened market investigations into their dominance in cloud computing under the Digital Markets Act (DMA).
The first two probes will assess whether Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure should be classified as “gatekeepers” for their cloud computing services, in other words whether they act as important gateways between businesses and consumers, despite not meeting the DMA gatekeeper thresholds for size, user number and market position.
A third investigation will explore whether the DMA is “effective in addressing practices that limit competitiveness or are unfair in the cloud sector.”
“The investigation will cover, for instance, obstacles to interoperability between cloud computing services, limited or conditioned access for business users to data, tying and bundling services, and potentially imbalanced contractual terms,” according to the commission’s statement.
The commission plans to conclude its probe in 12 months and publish a final report within 18 months.
If Amazon (AMZN) or Microsoft (MSFT) are found to be gatekeeping their cloud computing services, they will have six months to ensure compliance with DMA rules.
Earlier this year the UK’s competition regulator said that both companies were holding “significant unilateral market power” and called for an investigation into possibly unfair practices and licensing terms.