By Foo Yun Chee

BRUSSELS. (Reuters) – A study released Tuesday said that the EU should consider cloud computing providers to address anti-competitive practices.

The report coincides with concerns that some EU lawmakers who are reviewing the Digital Markets Act https://www.reuters.com/technology/tech-rules-not-just-few-giants-eus-vestager-says-2021-07-02 (DMA) proposed by EU antitrust chief Margrethe Vestager may be lenient towards cloud computing companies.

Market research firm Statista discovered that Amazon’s Amazon Web Services was a leading provider for the second quarter. Microsoft Azure (NASDAQ:) and Google Cloud were close behind. There are others IBM Cloud (NYSE: Alibaba (NYSE 🙂 Cloud, Salesforce (NYSE 🙂 and Oracle(NYSE :).

Frederic Jenny was the chairman of Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development’s Competition Committee. He prepared the study in his own capacity for trade body CISPE.

Jenny stated that while the DMA states that cloud infrastructure is allowed to be included within its scope, it’s not clear that all suppliers are. Jenny spoke with Reuters about this in an interview.

He suggested that some companies might use unfair pricing or make it technical difficult to transfer to another company.

Jenny stated that the study interviewed 25 cloud computing companies. Some of these companies cited unfair licensing terms, which force customers to pay more to continue using software that they have purchased when they switch to another company.

Respondents also expressed concern about cloud providers bundling their software products with other cloud infrastructure products to make them less appealing or more costly.

Google, Oracle, and SAP did not respond to requests for comment. Microsoft and Amazon declined to comment immediately.

The draft DMA must be negotiated with EU members before it can become law. This could occur in 2023.