The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) of the United States has broadened its antitrust scrutiny on Amazon Inc. The probes will not only be on its retail operations but also its cloud computing business – according to the people who are familiar with this matter.
According to the Bloomberg report on Wednesday, the U.S antitrust enforcers have asked software companies about the works of Amazon’s cloud unit, which is called Amazon Web Services.
The big tech-based businesses such as Alphabet’s Google, Amazon, Facebook Inc, and Apple Inc are facing the antitrust scrutinies by the state attorneys general, Congress, and the federal government.
The FTC’s technology enforcement division is intensifying its scrutiny of multiple-sided policies on illegal conduct and the mergers that earlier obtained approval on antitrust.
FTC had declined to comment on it while Amazon stayed calm when Reuter requested for comment.
Cloud computing is one of the rapidly growing fields in the technology-based industry. Many of the businesses rent out the servers from Amazon instead of having their own data centers.
Amazon is one of the biggest cloud service providers, and it is closely competing with Microsoft. Now, even smaller companies are competing to provide cloud services to corporate customers and developers.
It is expected by the analysts that Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud unit in terms of market share, is the global leader. According to the IBES data collected by Refinitiv, AWS has generated sales of $34.9 billion in 2019.
It is estimated that Amazon Web Services accounts for 60% of Amazon’s operating income. The company is continuing to invest heavily to expand its cloud computing business and retail as well.
Amazon also sells a range of products including, data-warehousing products, machine-learning tools, and databases.
In addition to the probes of FTC, the Judiciary Committee of Justice Department and House of Representatives are also investigating on all the four tech giants.
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