Big Tech cloud service providers land in EU regulation crosshairs

Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud are all set to be investigated by the European Commission. 

UK regulators are launching investigations into cloud service providers over non-compliance with its rules on market competition. 

Cloud service providers under investigation

European regulators are set to launch an investigation into  Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud under the scope of the EU’s Digital Markets Act (DMA). 

The officials said the European Commission is evaluating whether or not these companies’ dominance gives them too much control over the market and whether an intervention is needed to promote competition and resilience. The areas under review include data portability, interoperability with rival platforms, and restrictions on tying and bundling of services.

So far, providers have managed to avoid drawing DMA scrutiny due to the fact that many of their customers are enterprises, which makes counting “individual users” more challenging. 

Major cloud outages over the last year have exposed the risks of overreliance on just a few providers. The EU worries that if the cloud market remains consolidated, any disruption to operations would be felt widely. 

For instance, AWS suffered a 15-hour outage in October that affected companies including Apple and McDonald’s. Microsoft Azure experienced a glitch that disrupted airline check-ins, and Google Cloud has also gone offline for some high-profile clients.

UK crackdown on market concentration

If the Commission finds that AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud qualify under the DMA framework, they could face new legal duties such as making it easier for customers to switch providers, share data, or break up bundled services. Noncompliance would result in the company being fined. 

These will not be the first companies to be fined over market concentration practices. Back in July 2025, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) concluded a market investigation into cloud services and found a “significant unilateral market power” for both AWS and Microsoft. 

The CMA’s report showed that these companies were charging customers expensive fees called “egress fees” just to move data out of their cloud.

They reportedly offered poor interoperability to their customers and had licensing practices that made it more expensive to run Microsoft software on rivals’ platforms. 

In the end, both companies were appointed Strategic Market Status (SMS) under the CMA’s new digital markets law, which would permit them to intervene at certain times.