UK Competition Watchdog Launches Investigation into Cloud Giants Amazon, Microsoft and Google Over Anti-Competitive Practices

The UK's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) is launching an investigation into major cloud providers like AWS, Microsoft, and Google over anti-competitive practices.

The main issues are high egress fees for moving data between clouds, lack of interoperability between cloud services, and discounts incentivizing vendor lock-in.

The investigation comes after an initial market study by Ofcom raised concerns about competition in the UK's £7.5 billion cloud market.

AWS, Microsoft, and Google hold up to 90% of UK cloud revenues, with AWS and Microsoft accounting for 80% between them.

The CMA investigation is expected to conclude by April 2025 and will decide which specific issues to focus on.