Tech UPTechnologyNow for the cloud, the big techs will be...

Now for the cloud, the big techs will be investigated for possible monopoly

Amazon, Microsoft and Google are being investigated by the UK media regulator Ofcom for their dominant position in the cloud computing industry, one of its most profitable.

Selina Chadha, director of connectivity at Ofcom, stressed that so far it has not been determined that these technology giants are involved in anti-competitive behavior, so the review will be carried out and its results and proposals will be published within a year.

The research will focus on Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud, as they are the main companies offering remote data connection and analysis tools in the cloud.

“The way we live, work, play and do business has been changed by digital services. But as the number of platforms, devices and networks serving content grows, so do the technological and economic issues facing regulators,” Chadha noted.

The purpose of this research is to analyze this digital market to identify any kind of competition problem and make sure that it “works well for the people and companies that trust them”.

And it is that these three companies are among the most important and dominant in the field of the cloud. According to Ofcom data, this trio generates about 81% of revenue in the cloud infrastructure market in the UK alone.

In the second quarter of 2022, global spending on cloud infrastructure services rose to $55 billion, bringing the industry total for the past twelve months to more than $200 billion, according to data from Synergy Research Group.

The same firm highlights that AWS is the most dominant participant, as its market share in the global cloud infrastructure market rose to 34% in the second quarter of 2022, surpassing the combined share of Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud.

In this context, companies such as Microsoft have already been accused of abusing their dominant position in the cloud market, both in the United States and in Europe. Last May, a coalition of European cloud providers accused the company of making it difficult to integrate its applications in favor of Azure.

Because of this, the company met with the European Commission to implement new principles around competitiveness in the cloud. “We were wrong. We weren’t doing enough to protect smaller companies,” Microsoft Chairman Brad Smith said.

On the other hand, Ofcom also plans to investigate other digital markets, such as virtual messaging and digital assistants, in which companies such as Amazon or Meta stand out, which are under scrutiny by regulatory bodies.

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