London CNN —Microsoft and Amazon could be in hot water over apparently making it difficult for UK customers to use multiple suppliers of vital cloud services. The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), the country’s antitrust regulator, said Thursday it was launching an investigation into the UK cloud infrastructure services market to determine whether players were engaged in anti-competitive practices. This “cloud infrastructure” forms the foundation for how software applications, such as Gmail and Dropbox, are developed and run. According to Ofcom, last year Microsoft and AWS had a combined market share of 70-80% in the UK cloud infrastructure services market. The report also raised concerns about the software licensing practices of some cloud providers, particularly Microsoft.

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Persons: Sarah Cardell Organizations: London CNN, Microsoft, Markets Authority, Amazon Web Services, CMA, Ofcom, European Digital Services, Amazon, Apple, Google, Facebook, AWS Locations: United Kingdom