Recently, Microsoft was accused of formulating punitive licensing terms to prevent users from transferring data from its Azure cloud service platform to other competitor platforms, which is suspected of abusing its power in the software market.
Microsoft's specific measures include significantly increasing subscription fees for transferring data users, charging additional "exit fees," and intentionally making its Office 365 products incompatible with competitor platforms.
Microsoft is facing similar scrutiny in the European region. The UK Competition and Markets Authority is investigating whether Microsoft and Amazon have attempted to use exclusive discounts and high "export fees" for migrating data from the cloud to prevent users from choosing other service providers, as reported by users. In July of this year, Microsoft reached millions of dollars in deals with multiple cloud service providers to avoid a formal investigation by the European Union.
The Financial Times said that cloud services and related infrastructure are now one of the most profitable businesses for tech giants, and the recent demand for processing power to train and run artificial intelligence models has further driven this trend. Enterprises' investment in cloud services will surge to $561 billion by 2023. According to the estimation of the American consulting firm Gartner, the related investment will continue to grow to 675 billion and 825 billion US dollars in the next two years. Currently, Microsoft holds a 20% market share in the global cloud market, losing to Amazon's 31% but surpassing Google's 12%.
Microsoft is currently the third largest enterprise in the world by market value, following only Nvidia and Apple.