The Federal Trade Commission mentioned on Wednesday it’s looking for data from the general public on cloud computing firms’ enterprise practices together with particulars on their market energy, competitors and potential safety points.
The US cloud computing enterprise is dominated by 4 suppliers that embrace Amazon.com, Microsoft, Alphabet‘s Google and Oracle. None of the businesses instantly responded to a request for remark.
“Swathes of the economy now seem reliant on a small number of cloud computing providers,” mentioned FTC Chair Lina Khan on Twitter. She added that the FTC “is seeking public input on how the current market structure and business practices of cloud providers affect competition and data security.”
The FTC and Justice Department underneath President Joe Biden have taken a robust stance in opposition to the perceived abuse of market energy by difficult quite a few mergers, cracking down on what it calls “junk fees”, and different actions aimed toward giving shoppers extra say within the providers they use.
Recently, regulators have began to focus on the cloud. Europe’s antitrust authority started probing Microsoft’s licensing agreements that discouraged rival cloud utilization, prompting modifications by the corporate in October that critics nonetheless known as inadequate. Fees to take information out of assorted suppliers’ clouds have additionally drawn scrutiny from smaller gamers.
FTC workers have an interest within the affect of cloud computing on industries together with “healthcare, finance, transportation, e-commerce, and defense,” based on its press launch.
The public may have till May 22 to submit a remark on the FTC “Request for information”.
The company is asking for feedback on which segments of the economic system rely on a handful of cloud service suppliers, element on contract negotiations, incentives to purchase extra providers from a single supplier, element on providers offered and data on notifications associated to safety.
The client safety company famous it has focused firms that did not put in place safety safeguards to guard information saved on third-party cloud computing providers together with one involving the alcohol supply platform Drizly and one other targeted on schooling expertise supplier Chegg.
© Thomson Reuters 2023
