By Edith Hancock
The European Commission opened three investigations into cloud computing under the Digital Markets Act, honing in on Amazon.com and Microsoft's popular services.
The European Union's executive arm said Tuesday that it will look at whether Amazon and Microsoft should be designated as gatekeepers under the law for their ownership of Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure, despite not meeting the usual thresholds companies' services need to cross to qualify for that label.
The commission said it will also open a market investigation to look at whether the DMA can effectively tackle practices that could limit competitiveness and fairness in the bloc's cloud computing sector. The investigation will focus on potential obstacles to interoperability between cloud computing services, restricted access to data for business users, bundling multiple services in one product sale and potentially imbalanced contracts for cloud products, it said.
The regulator said it would aim to wrap up the probes within 12 months.
A spokesperson for Microsoft said the company stands ready to contribute to the commission's market inquiry, and that Europe's cloud sector is innovative and highly competitive.
"We're confident that when the European Commission considers the facts, it will recognize what we all see--the cloud computing sector is extremely dynamic, with companies enjoying lots of choice, unprecedented innovation opportunity, and low costs," a spokesperson for AWS said.
Under the DMA, companies like Microsoft and Amazon can be labeled as so-called "gatekeepers" due to their ownership of key routes to market in the digital economy such as search engines or computer operating systems.
Platforms typically need to have a certain, high level of monthly business users in the EU and cross certain revenue thresholds to qualify as services that the EU needs to regulate under the DMA, but the commission can also look at companies if they control an important gateway--such as cloud computing--to check if their services need to come under the scope of the law.
Tech companies Microsoft, Amazon and Alphabet's Google have clashed over competition in the fast-growing sector in recent years. Google complained against Microsoft to the commission last, saying its practices were unfairly hindering rivals.
"Cloud computing services are vital for Europe's competitiveness and resilience. We want this strategic sector to grow on fair, open, and competitive terms," Teresa Ribera, the bloc's competition commissioner, said.
Write to Edith Hancock at edith.hancock@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
11-18-25 0702ET
