Microsoft faces wide-ranging US antitrust probe

The FTC is examining allegations the bundle elephantine is perchance abusing its marketplace powerfulness successful productivity bundle by imposing punitive licensing presumption to forestall customers from moving their information from its Azure unreality work to different competitory platforms, sources confirmed earlier this month.

The FTC is besides looking astatine practices related to cybersecurity and artificial quality products, the root said connected Wednesday.

Microsoft declined to remark connected Wednesday.

Competitors person criticized Microsoft’s practices they accidental support customers locked into its unreality offering, Azure. The FTC fielded specified complaints past twelvemonth arsenic it examined the unreality computing market.

NetChoice, a lobbying radical that represents online companies including Amazon and Google, which vie with Microsoft successful unreality computing, criticized Microsoft’s licensing policies, and its integration of AI tools into its Office and Outlook.

“Given that Microsoft is the world’s largest bundle company, dominating successful productivity and operating systems software, the standard and consequences of its licensing decisions are extraordinary,” the radical said.

Google successful September complained to the European Commission astir Microsoft’s practices, saying it made customers wage a 400% mark-up to support moving Windows Server connected rival unreality computing operators, and gave them aboriginal and much constricted information updates.

The FTC has demanded a wide scope of elaborate accusation from Microsoft, Bloomberg reported earlier connected Wednesday.

The bureau had already claimed jurisdiction implicit probes into Microsoft and OpenAI regarding contention successful artificial intelligence, and started looking into Microsoft’s $650 cardinal woody with AI startup Inflection AI.

Microsoft has been somewhat of an objection to U.S. antitrust regulators’ caller run against allegedly anticompetitive practices astatine Big Tech companies.

Facebook proprietor Meta Platforms, Apple, and Amazon.com Inc. person each been accused by the U.S. of unlawfully maintaining monopolies.

Alphabet’s Google is facing 2 lawsuits, including 1 wherever a justice recovered it unlawfully thwarted contention among online hunt engines.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella testified astatine Google’s trial, saying the hunt elephantine was utilizing exclusive deals with publishers to fastener up contented utilized to bid artificial intelligence.

It is unclear whether Trump volition easiness up connected Big Tech, whose archetypal medication launched respective Big Tech probes. JD Vance, the incoming vice president, has expressed interest astir the powerfulness the companies wield implicit nationalist discourse.

“The Trump medication was an assertive enforcer of the antitrust laws,” said Andre Barlow, a lawyer with Doyle Barlow & Mazard, noting it filed suits against Google and Facebook.

“When administrations change, the agencies bash not needfully driblet ongoing investigations,” helium added, noting that “changes successful medication tin pb to evolving enforcement priorities and shifts successful however aggressively definite types of behaviour are scrutinized.”

Still, Microsoft has benefited from Trump policies successful the past.

In 2019, the Pentagon awarded it a $10 cardinal unreality computing declaration that Amazon had wide been expected to win. Amazon aboriginal alleged that Trump exerted improper unit connected subject officials to steer the declaration distant from its Amazon Web Services unit.