UK Competition Authority Rains on Microsoft and Amazon Cloud Parade (cnbc.com)
(Thursday July 31, 2025 @05:20PM (msmash)
from the umbrella-corporations dept.)
- Reference: 0178524912
- News link: https://news.slashdot.org/story/25/07/31/1553241/uk-competition-authority-rains-on-microsoft-and-amazon-cloud-parade
- Source link: https://www.cnbc.com/2025/07/31/uk-cma-cloud-ruling-microsoft-amazon.html
Britain's Competition and Markets Authority concluded that Microsoft and Amazon [1]hold "significant unilateral market power" in cloud services and recommended investigating both companies under new competition rules. The regulator said it had concerns about practices creating customer "lock-in" effects through egress fees and unfavorable licensing terms that trap businesses in difficult-to-exit contracts.
Microsoft and Amazon each control roughly 30-40% of the infrastructure-as-a-service market, while Google holds 5-10%. Microsoft disputed the findings, calling the cloud market "dynamic and competitive." Amazon said the probe recommendations were "unwarranted."
[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2025/07/31/uk-cma-cloud-ruling-microsoft-amazon.html
Microsoft and Amazon each control roughly 30-40% of the infrastructure-as-a-service market, while Google holds 5-10%. Microsoft disputed the findings, calling the cloud market "dynamic and competitive." Amazon said the probe recommendations were "unwarranted."
[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2025/07/31/uk-cma-cloud-ruling-microsoft-amazon.html
I grieve for the King's English (Score:3)
There are two market leaders, and the regulator describes this as a "unilateral" situation. Together they maybe serve 40% of the market, and even adding the third biggest seller -- who also happens to dominate online search and wants to capture cloud computing business -- doesn't get above 50% of the market.
Governments are just about the only unilateral movers in this space.
Re: (Score:2)
I think you may have misread (or maybe you have better information from elsewhere). Summary says:
> Microsoft and Amazon each control roughly 30-40% of the infrastructure-as-a-service market, while Google holds 5-10%.
That would be 65-90% all in.
Re: (Score:2)
That's still a long way from unilateral, though, even if we look narrowly at the IaaS market.
Re: (Score:3)
I interpret "unilateral market power" to mean that the suppliers have asymmetric power over the customers. There is little competition once you are locked into an ecosystem.
Sure, you can rent some compute from another company, but you have all these networks and firewalls and databases and data stores you've set up within one company's borders. The competition has similar services, but they're not quite drop in replacements, so you can't just pick up and move to take advantage of better pricing. It can t