European Commission considers classifying AWS and Azure as gatekeepers under Digital Markets Act
The European Commission wants to designate Amazon AWS and Microsoft Azure as gatekeepers under the Digital Markets Act (DMA).
Findings from an exploratory investigation state that AWS and Azure are the largest cloud services in Europe. From that position as providers they are an important gatekeeper. The investigation was carried out in cooperation with the Dutch regulator ACM.
Both have a huge and established user base and appear to benefit from lock-in effects and high switching costs, in addition to a large ecosystem. Moreover, their portfolio of tools and partnerships in the field of artificial intelligence has become a decisive factor when purchasing cloud solutions.
Microsoft and Amazon are already listed in the DMA – Microsoft for Windows and LinkedIn, Amazon for Amazon Marketplace. The new designation would be a first for cloud services.
Amazon and Microsoft now have the opportunity to respond to the results of the investigation. On the basis of those responses, the Commission can decide whether or not to scrutinise them more closely.
The aim of any measures is to make their platforms fairer, more open and less self-preferencing. This will give them less room to automatically favour their own services and will lead to more oversight, more reporting obligations and possibly mandatory changes to contracts, interfaces and the ranking of services.
Obligations for gatekeepers include allowing third party interoperability; prohibition to reuse personal data collected during provision of one service for the purposes of another; banning of end-user tracking outside their CPS for targeted advertising; and prohibition of unfair business practices, such as self-preferencing.
The Commission can impose fines of up to 10% of a company’s global annual turnover and up to 20% of worldwide turnover for repeated infringement.
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