The Competition Commission (CompCom), South Africa’s antitrust body, is moving to launch an inquiry into Microsoft Azure’s cloud computing licencing policies in the nation.
According to a Reuters source, the antitrust action against Microsoft in South Africa is anticipated to be comparable to one in the European Union.
However, Microsoft emailed to state that it is unaware of any complaints the South African competition regulator has made.
Competitors in the EU have filed a protest against the software behemoth for its licencing policies in cloud computing.
Similar worries have prompted the European Union (EU) to take legal action against the software giant after rivals’ complaints about its licencing practices were examined.
In November 2022, the European Commission received a complaint from the Cloud Infrastructure Services Providers in Europe (CISPE), a trade association made up of 26 firms, alleging that Microsoft’s cloud software licencing terms were harmful to the Union’s cloud ecosystem.
The inquiry, which is scheduled to start in a few days, comes as regulators worldwide are becoming increasingly concerned that the US tech giant is abusing its market dominance to drive out competitors.
The nation’s commission officials are still looking into whether new developments like artificial intelligence (AI) models and digital and social media platforms run by international companies, like Microsoft’s Bing, are hurting the nation’s news and media companies’ capacity to make money.
The French competition authority announced in a recent report that it had penalised Alphabet’s Google 250 million euros ($271.73 million) for violating EU intellectual property laws in its dealings with media publishers.
