The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is pushing ahead with its cloud market competition investigation into Microsoft.

As reported by Bloomberg, the FTC has in recent weeks issued "civil investigative demands" to Microsoft's competitors in the business software and cloud computing markets, with the publication citing people familiar with the matter.

The investigation first kicked off in November 2024, and seeks to see if Microsoft unfairly dominates the cloud and AI market in the US through its software licensing practices.

At the time, it was said that the FTC under former chair Lina Khan had sent Microsoft a "detailed request" for information and documentation covering everything from Microsoft's cloud computing business, software licensing practices, cybersecurity offerings, and artificial intelligence (AI) products.

With the change of administration at the beginning of 2025, the job has now fallen to FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson. The FTC is now seeking evidence that the company intentionally makes it harder for customers to use its offerings on rival cloud providers.

According to the Bloomberg report, at least half a dozen companies have received civil investigative demands. Both Microsoft and the FTC declined to comment to the publication.

This is not Microsoft's first rodeo in regards to anti-competition investigations, even with regard to Azure.

In the summer of last year, the UK's Competition and Markets Authority concluded its own cloud services market investigation, concluding that there were indeed issues with competition in the market, and placing Microsoft and Amazon Web Services under further investigation.

Microsoft particularly drew scrutiny in the final report, with an entire section dedicated to the company's software licensing, noting that the company does not make certain products available to Google and AWS, and "these restrictions mean that AWS’ and Google’s competitive offerings are directly affected by Microsoft’s licensing practices."

The CMA further found that certain software products are used "disproportionately on Azure" and that "given the very large difference, this is at least partly because some customers’ choice of cloud is influenced by Microsoft’s licensing practices."

In continental Europe, Microsoft has found some compromise with the Cloud Infrastructure Service Providers in Europe (CISPE) organization, having worked with CISPE to find a way to enable CISPE members to run Microsoft software on their platforms at equivalent prices to Microsoft's. After a year of trial and error, CISPE's European Cloud Competition Observatory (ECCO) has awarded Microsoft a "green" status in its third report, stating that it had been able to secure "a series of changes to Microsoft terms which, if delivered as set out in the agreement, will resolve many of the issues raised in its competition complaint."

While in the US, the investigation seems to still be actively underway, Bloomberg notes that an FTC probe does not necessarily guarantee any enforcement action, and "no final decisions have been made."