US Regulators Plan To Investigate Microsoft's Cloud Business

The Federal Trade Commission is preparing to launch an investigation into anti-competitive practices at Microsoft's cloud computing business, Financial Times reported Thursday, as the US regulator continues to pursue Big Tech in the final weeks of Joe Biden's presidency. From the report: The FTC is examining allegations that Microsoft is abusing its market power in productivity software by imposing punitive licensing terms to prevent customers from moving their data from its Azure cloud service to competitors' platforms, according to people with direct knowledge of the matter.

Tactics being examined include substantially increasing subscription fees for those that leave, charging steep exit fees and allegedly making its Office 365 products incompatible with rival clouds, they added.

Increasing fees everywhere

[Anonymous Coward]

Or increasing per core / server license fees to push business server customers to the cloud. Or increasing desktop licensing fees to push desktop users to the cloud. Or anything else they can think of to drive people away forever or into a walled garden of ads. If more developers would use MariaDB as a back end, life would be much easier. But no, only certified with Microsoft SQL server - no other databases need apply.

Re:

[Tablizer]

increasing desktop licensing fees to push desktop users to the cloud.

This isn't directly an antitrust issue, just a slimy business practice since MS doesn't have to offer any desktop software. Since MS is still the de-facto business platform standard, there are not a lot of viable desktop alternatives, however, so it's on the fuzzy borderline of antitrust.

Let's just get together and form an HTTP-friendly state-ful GUI standard [slashdot.org] so we can run ever more software on Linux and tell MS to finally shove Windows u

Re:

[KlomDark]

MariaDB? Are you kidding? Maybe for some little/middling site. But other than that, yuck. From all the ones I've used my preference is: 1. MS SQL (Error messages that make sense?! No way!) 2. Oracle (Absolutely horrid error messages that make next to no sense, if you're lucky) 3. Postgres (Only for small/medium) ... 7. MariaDB 8. My SQL

BillG backed the wrong horse

[BuckBundy]

Ooops, the Emperor strikes back

Re:

[fafalone]

This won't be completed 2 months so other than enriching the incoming convicted felon in chief when MS has to bribe its way out of this, I'm not sure there's any real consequences for anyone here.

Re:

[KlomDark]

Someone sounds triggered. You want to live in a monopoly-only society? Go do that shit somewhere else.

Re: Tired

[drinkypoo]

You're going to get your wish soon.

Mine is that you learn something from it, but I wouldn't bet on that happening.

Yeah this isn't going to survive

[rsilvergun]

The incoming administration. We are going to have absolutely no antitrust law enforcement for the next 4 years. That Kroger merger is probably going to somehow get approved and all our grocery prices are going to shoot up.

I really wish people understood what they were voting for. We're not even going to do mass deportations. You really think large businesses and the billionaire head of state are going to give up all that cheap labor? Would you?

This will soon go away

[Tony Isaac]

A short time after January 6.

MICROS~1 the company that made boolean tristate

[Mirnotoriety]

> allegedly making its Office 365 products incompatible with rival clouds

Only allegedly /s

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“In Windows, many system settings .. often use Boolean values (1, 0, default)”