Preliminary position calls for designation under the Digital Markets Act
The European Commission has reached the preliminary position that Azure and AWS should be designated as gatekeepers under the Digital Markets Act (DMA).The gatekeeper designation would mean requirements imposed on the cloud giants, with fines of up to 10 percent of worldwide turnover if those requirements are not met.According to the Commission, AWS and Azure, "the largest and second largest cloud computing services in the EU respectively," are a gateway between businesses and their customers in the bloc.
"They both have vast and entrenched user bases and appear to benefit from lock-in effects and high switching costs, in addition to a large ecosystem."
Although the cloud giants did not meet the DMA's quantitative thresholds for designation (such as user numbers), their market positions have attracted scrutiny. Should the gatekeeper designations stick, obligations regarding interoperability, access to data, and competition would apply.The view is preliminary at this stage, and Amazon and Microsoft have the opportunity to respond before anything becomes final.A Microsoft spokesperson told The Register: "We continue to engage constructively with the Commission. The cloud sector in Europe is innovative, highly competitive and an accelerator for growth across the economy."The spokesperson added: "We remain concerned that ignoring the growing power of Google Cloud and Gemini will tilt the market in a harmful way." AWS also disagreed with the Commission's preliminary position. A spokesperson told The Register: "The Commission's preliminary findings disregard the breadth of cloud services available to European customers and risk deterring European investment and innovation. AWS faces healthy competition and customers across Europe have more choice, lower prices, and greater flexibility than ever before.
