GoKawiilis a senior policy reporter at The Verge, covering the intersection of Silicon Valley and Capitol Hill. She spent 5 years covering tech policy at CNBC, writing about antitrust, privacy, and content moderation reform.
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Over the past several years, Microsoft has largely managed to withstand populist calls to break up Big Tech while peers faced sweeping lawsuits. But a probe by the Federal Trade Commission suggests that grace period could be nearing an end.
Earlier this year, Bloomberg outlined the contents of civil investigative demands (CIDs) — similar to a subpoena — the FTC sent to at least half a dozen companies that compete with Microsoft. New details obtained by The Verge further reveal the FTC’s interests, suggesting the agency is particularly concerned with potentially exclusionary behavior around Microsoft’s Azure cloud services, as well as its role in the AI industry.
There’s no guarantee the investigation — which began under the Biden administration in 2024 and continued under President Donald Trump — will end in a legal complaint. After further investigative steps, FTC staff will choose whether to recommend filing one, and the agency’s two commissioners will take a vote. Should they approve a lawsuit, however, Microsoft may find itself back in a hot seat it occupied more than two decades ago, when a court found it had an illegal PC operating system monopoly.
The Verge obtained previously unreported information about the letters from an industry source who reviewed them and was granted anonymity to speak on nonpublic information. The Verge further verified the document. The questions show the FTC gathering information on industry practices and competitive stumbling blocks, asking about Microsoft’s business agreements, licensing arrangements, and interoperability of its products. The documents generally span more than 15 pages and over 15 questions, often with extensive sub-parts.
Do you have information about government investigations into Microsoft and Big Tech? Reach out securely and anonymously with tips from a non-work device to Lauren Feiner via Signal at laurenfeiner.64.
The CIDs say the goal of the FTC probe is to determine if Microsoft has used unfair methods of competition in its cloud, software products, and related services in violation of the FTC Act, the source says. The FTC did not respond to a request for comment. Microsoft spokesperson Alex Haurek says that the company is “cooperating fully with the FTC and believe our practices promote competition while delivering the innovative products our customers expect.”
Customers have complained — often anonymously for fear of retaliation — that Microsoft’s 2019 changes to its licensing terms made it significantly more costly to run Windows software on infrastructure outside of Microsoft’s Azure cloud. In 2023, Google responded to a broad FTC inquiry about business practices in the cloud computing industry by accusing Microsoft of using dominance in other areas to “give their own cloud products an unearned advantage” and lock in consumers. Microsoft insists there’s plenty of competition in the cloud sector, and Haurek pointed to Google as “a clear example of that dynamic—growing 63% year over year and competing head-to-head with other major providers including AWS, the largest cloud provider.”
Microsoft’s growth in cloud computing has helped push its valuation to historic highs
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