Tech
Microsoft hit with $1.25bn UK antitrust lawsuit in cloud fees damage
American multinational technology conglomerate Microsoft has been hit with a $1.25 billion antitrust lawsuit by the United Kingdom Competition Appeal Tribunal.
The allegations in the class-action lawsuit center on the costs that Microsoft paid companies and other entities for Windows Server licensing when they were users of competing cloud computing platforms.
Customers of Google Cloud Platform (GCP), Alibaba Cloud, and Amazon’s AWS allegedly had to pay more to use Microsoft’s software than those of its own Azure cloud computing service, according to the lawsuit.
This comes days after the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) initiated a sweeping antitrust inquiry into Microsoft, as reported by the Financial Times.
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The investigation encompasses a wide spectrum of the US tech giant’s services, including cloud computing, cybersecurity, and artificial intelligence, according to reports from Bloomberg and other media sites on Wednesday.
The FTC is reportedly investigating if Microsoft’s public cloud, artificial intelligence, and cybersecurity product lines are among the various areas of the business where antitrust legislation may have been broken.
According to The New York Times, the FTC is especially interested in how Microsoft combines its cloud products with its office and security capabilities.
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