The US Federal Trade Commission has launched an antitrust investigation into Microsoft

Bloomberg notes that Microsoft’s competitors have complained about complex software licensing terms and multiple product offerings that have complicated the market position of several competing software developers. For example, MS Office offers the Teams workspace for free, making it difficult for Zoom to compete with Microsoft.

According to the publication’s sources, FTC antitrust lawyers will meet with Microsoft’s competitors to obtain information about the corporation’s competition practices.

The decision to start verifying the company was associated with a series of incidents in the field of cybersecurity: Microsoft is one of the main suppliers of software and cloud technologies to the federal government, including the Pentagon.

Microsoft and the regulator declined to comment.

The investigation was personally approved by Commission Chair Lina Khan before her resignation in January 2025 due to a change in the presidential team and the arrival of the supposedly more business-friendly administration of Republican Donald Trump. Bloomberg notes that the viability of the investigation ultimately depends on the decision of the next FTC chief. According to Andre Barlow, a lawyer at Doyle Barlow & Mazard interviewed by Reuters, the Trump administration was an “aggressive antitrust agent.”

In a November 2023 report, the FTC highlighted its concerns about the high monopolization of the cloud computing market. “Operational failures or other problems that degrade the quality of a cloud service provider’s services can have a cascading impact on the economy or individual industries,” the regulator’s experts noted. According to the FTC, the lack of competition in the cloud market may cause major players to not pay enough attention to the quality and security of their products.