According to Bloomberg, the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) launched an antitrust investigation against Microsoft. According to agency sources, the commission requested detailed information from the company on software licensing, cyber security and artificial intelligence. Thus, Microsoft became the fifth major technological organization to be subjected to antitrust investigation.

The voluminous survey, running hundreds of pages, was compiled by antitrust officials after more than a year of informal discussions with Microsoft’s competitors and business partners, according to the source. The regulator looks after all aspects of its operations, from cloud computing and the company’s software licensing to its cybersecurity offerings and artificial intelligence products. The focus here is on Microsoft integrating its popular productivity and security office software with Azure’s cloud offerings.

The FTC’s interest in Microsoft’s cloud business has intensified following several security incidents involving its products. The fact that Microsoft is a leading software supplier to US government agencies also plays a big role.

In a November 2023 report, the FTC expressed concerns that the concentrated nature of the cloud market means: “Outages or other issues that impair the quality of a cloud service provider’s services may have a cascading impact on the economy or specific sectors.”

The government’s Cyber ​​Security Council concluded earlier this year that: “Microsoft’s security culture is inadequate and needs to be reviewed, especially in light of the company’s central role in the technology ecosystem.” The resulting CrowdStrike systems crash, which affected 8.5 million Windows computers, further raised the regulator’s concerns about the situation at Microsoft.

In the late 1990s, the company faced an antitrust lawsuit from the US Department of Justice over the bundling of its web browser and the Windows operating system, but in recent years Amazon has largely managed to avoid antitrust charges, unlike Apple, Meta, and Google.