According to a questionnaire seen by Reuters, EU antitrust officials are questioning Microsoft’s competitors and customers about its cloud business and licencing relationships, a step that could lead to a formal probe and renewed scrutiny of the US software giant.
In the previous decade, the European Commission fined Microsoft a total of 1.6 billion euros (A$2.4 billion) for breaking EU antitrust regulations and failing to comply with its order to stop anticompetitive conduct.
After German software firm NextCloud, France’s OVHcloud, and two other companies submitted complaints about Microsoft’s cloud tactics, the corporation was once again on the EU competition enforcer’s radar.
“The commission has information that Microsoft may be attempting to limit competition in some cloud computing services by exploiting its potentially dominant position in certain software marketplaces,” the questionnaire stated.
Microsoft’s licencing agreements with cloud service providers are being scrutinised by regulators to see if they allow competitors to compete successfully.
They also want to know if enterprises needed Microsoft’s operating systems and productivity programmes to compete effectively with their own cloud infrastructure offering.
Companies were also questioned about the discrepancies in licence costs and commercial terms between cloud service provider licencing deals and another programme in which they package and resell Microsoft’s cloud services alongside their own.
Potential technical constraints on cloud storage services accessible on a company’s cloud infrastructure were also a focus.
In an emailed statement, Microsoft said, “We’re constantly examining how we can best serve partners and make Microsoft software available to consumers across all settings, including those of other cloud providers.”
Margrethe Vestager, the EU’s antitrust director, said last week that she had no reservations about cloud computing yet, citing competition from Europe’s Gaia-X effort.
