The United States Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has opened a monopoly investigation into Microsoft. According to numerous media outlets in the North American country, the agency has already sent the company led by Satya Nadella a request requesting information about its artificial intelligence, cloud computing and cybersecurity products.
Microsoft was the only one of the big five American technology companies (which also includes Meta, Google, Apple and Amazon) that had not been investigated by the agency during the last four years. It is also Lina Khan’s last great service as president of the FTC, since everything indicates that she will leave office as soon as Donald Trump officially becomes president of the United States next January.
According to ‘The New York Times‘, the agency is especially interested in the way Microsoft combines its cloud computing offerings, through its Azure service with Office and security products. Although the investigation officially begins now, the FTC has spent months holding informal interviews with partners and competitors of the company co-founded by Bill Gates. These intensified even more after the technology company was affected by several errors in a short space of time.
It should be remembered that a faulty update, carried out in Windows, caused a failure in the Crowdstrike antivirus last summer that triggered blockages of millions of computers around the world, paralyzing airports and all types of companies. Previously, Chinese cybercriminals managed to access emails from members of the United States Government by taking advantage of a vulnerability in the security that Microsoft uses in the cloud.
Now, the FTC is trying to check whether the firm is abusing its large muscle in the software market to prevent users from easily moving their data stored in the cloud to other similar competing tools.
According to ‘Reuters‘, Microsoft’s competing companies in the field of cloud computing point out that it keeps customers trapped in Azure by taking advantage of the platform’s integration with artificial intelligence tools and Office.
“Given that Microsoft is the world’s largest software company and dominates the productivity and operating systems sectors, the scale and consequences of its licensing decisions are extraordinary,” said NetChoice, a lobbying group representing online companies. such as Amazon and Google, in statements collected by es medio.
However, it is not clear what the result of this investigation will be, especially considering that Joe Biden’s time, which has been marked by the beginning of several investigations into technology companies, is close to coming to an end. It will depend on the new Government, led by Trump, and the new team that will lead the FTC starting in January.
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