Overview
- The European Commission issued a preliminary finding on Thursday that Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure should be designated as ‘gatekeepers’ under the Digital Markets Act after a seven‑month market probe.
- If confirmed, the designation would require the firms to make data and services more interoperable, to ease customer switching and to stop unfair self‑preferencing, and it would expose them to fines up to 10% of global turnover for breaches.
- The Commission based its view on qualitative evidence of dominance — including large turnover, vast customer bases, high switching costs such as egress fees, and ecosystem lock‑in — rather than the DMA's usual user‑number thresholds.
- Both companies have pushed back, saying the DMA is not designed for cloud markets and warning the move could deter investment, while Microsoft also complained that Google Cloud was not included in the probe.
- The recommendation opens an administrative process that lets AWS and Microsoft respond before a final decision targeted by December 2026 and sits alongside a separate EU review of whether the DMA’s gatekeeper checklist fits cloud services and broader EU efforts to boost tech sovereignty.