FTC To Investigate Amazon Web Services As Antitrust Issues Surge

Amazon has established a strong foothold in the global market, be it in online retail or cloud services. However, there are mounting antitrust issues against the company. The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) will scrutinize Amazon's cloud computing sector, which is an expansion from the investigation in the retail sector.

Amazon Antitrust Issues

Amazon, along with other big tech players like Apple, Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and so on faces antitrust issues with the federal government. Earlier, FTC began its investigation on Amazon's online retail arm. Now, the FTC's Technology Enforcement Division has decided to focus the scrutiny on the multi-sided platforms. The anti-trust probes would look into illegal conduct and mergers.

Going into the details, Amazon's cloud computing is one of the biggest cloud service providers in the world. AWS competes closely with Microsoft's cloud computing. The antitrust issue has come to light as other businesses rent out servers from Amazon instead of running their own data centers. Moreover, smaller companies also compete with large tech giants to provide services on cloud networks to developers and other customers.

Amazon Antitrust Issues: Impact

The Bloomberg report states that the US antitrust enforcers have been conducting the investigation on software companies about practices around Amazon Web Services. "One issue the FTC could look at is whether Amazon has an incentive to discriminate against those software companies, which sell their products to clients of AWS, while at the same time competing with Amazon," says the report.

The latest update of FTC scrutiny on Amazon's cloud computing will likely affect the revenue of the company. Analysts currently expect Amazon's cloud unit to generate approximately $35 billion in sales by the end of 2019. But the actual turn around could vary.

Lately, FTC has been conducting detailed investigations on major tech players. The US federal and state authorities are currently investigating Google and Facebook. On the other hand, the US House Judiciary Committee is examining Amazon and Apple.