It is known that the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) opened a large-scale antitrust investigation into Microsoft on November 27. In which, the FTC reviewed all aspects of the corporation's operations, from cloud computing, software licensing business to cybersecurity services and artificial intelligence (AI) products.
After more than a year of informal interviews with competitors and business partners, antitrust enforcement agencies drafted a detailed request for information from Microsoft. The request, hundreds of pages long, was sent to the company after FTC Chairwoman Lina Khan approved it.
FTC antitrust lawyers are expected to meet with Microsoft competitors next week to gather more information about the Redmond, Washington-based company's business practices.
The FTC's scrutiny of Microsoft's cloud computing business has been stepped up following a series of cybersecurity incidents involving the company's products.
The main focus of the investigation is Microsoft's bundling of its popular office software and security software with its cloud services. The FTC sees Microsoft's cybersecurity vulnerabilities as a concern given its status as a major government contractor.
In a November 2023 report, the FTC raised the above concerns about the concentrated nature of the cloud market, arguing that outages or other problems that degrade the quality of cloud providers’ services could have a ripple effect on the economy or specific sectors.
Earlier in 2024, CrowdStrike's system outage that affected millions of devices running on Microsoft Windows systems was a testament to the widespread use of the company's products and how it directly affected the global economy.
Part of the investigation focuses on the company's practices related to security software called Microsoft Entra ID that helps authenticate users logging into cloud-based software.
Competitors have complained that Microsoft's licensing terms and bundling of software with cloud services make it harder for rival cybersecurity and authentication companies to compete.
Companies like Salesforce Inc.'s Slack and Zoom Communications Inc. say Microsoft's practice of offering its Teams videoconferencing software for free in popular software packages like Word and Excel is anticompetitive and makes it harder for them to compete.
