A study on Tuesday said that the European Union’s draft plan to curb the power of Amazon, Apple, Alphabet’s Google and Facebook should also address potential anti-competitive behavior by cloud computing service providers.

The report coincides with the concerns of some EU legislators who are reviewing the Digital Market Act https://www.reuters.com/technology/tech-rules-not-just-few-giants-eus-vestager-says-2021-07-02 (DMA) proposed by EU antitrust chief Margrethe Vestager may be lenient towards cloud computing companies. Market research company Statista found that Amazon’s Amazon Web Services was the leading provider in the second quarter of this year, followed by Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud. Others include IBM Cloud, Alibaba Cloud, Salesforce and Oracle.

The study was prepared by Frederic Jenny, chairman of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development’s Competition Committee, in his personal capacity for the trade organization  Cloud Infrastructure Services Providers in Europe (CISPE). “DMA does say that cloud infrastructure can be within the scope of DMA, but it does not obviously cover all vendors.

For example, Google Cloud does not seem to be eligible to be a gatekeeper or IBM Cloud or Salesforce under DMA,” Jenny told Reuters in an interview Tell Reuters. He said that some companies’ potential anti-competitive practices may include unfair pricing techniques or make it technically difficult for users to switch to competitors. Jenny said that the study interviewed about 25 companies using cloud computing services, some of which mentioned unfair licensing terms and other issues, which forced customers to pay for the software they already own when they turn to competitors.

Respondents also worry that providers will bundle software products with their cloud infrastructure to reduce the attractiveness of competitors’ products or make them more expensive. Google, Oracle and SAP declined to comment. Microsoft and Amazon did not immediately respond to requests for comment. EU legislators must discuss the DMA draft with EU countries before it becomes law (possibly in 2023).

News Source : US News