: Amazon, Microsoft cloud services could face U.K. antitrust probe

Citing “significant concerns” that Amazon.com Inc. AMZN and Microsoft Corp. MSFT could be stifling competition in the cloud-computing market, U.K. regulators on Wednesday said they were “proposing to refer” the cloud services market to the Competition and Markets Authority, the U.K. antitrust regulator, for further investigation. Britain’s media and communications regulator Ofcom said its own probe, launched in October, had so far uncovered some “concerning practices, including by some of the biggest tech firms in the world,” said Fergal Farragher, the Ofcom director leading the investigation. Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure have a combined market share of 60% to 70% in the U.K., according to Ofcom’s investigation. Alphabet Inc.’s GOOGLGOOG Google is the next closest competitor, with a 5% to 10% share. The Competition and Markets Authority said it received Ofcom’s provisional findings Wednesday and was reviewing them. The Ofcom announcement comes days after Google Cloud accused Microsoft of anticompetitive cloud-computing practices. An AWS spokesperson told MarketWatch: “These are interim findings and AWS will continue to work with Ofcom ahead of the publication of its final report. The U.K. has a thriving and diverse IT industry with customers able to choose between a wide variety of IT providers. At AWS, we design our cloud services to give customers the freedom to build the solution that is right for them, with the technology of their choice. This has driven increased competition across a range of sectors in the U.K. economy by broadening access to innovative, highly secure, and scalable IT services.” Microsoft wasn’t immediately available for comment on the Ofcom probe.

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