5 hours Ago By Varun Godinho
The US Federal Trade Commission has decided to proceed with an antitrust probe against Microsoft which was initiated under the Biden administration. While Microsoft would have wanted the probe to be dropped under the new Trump administration, that no longer seems to be the case, with FTC Chair Andrew Ferguson deciding to pursue the investigation. Last year, the FTC sent Microsoft a so-called civil investigative demand which compels the company to turn over data about its AI operations, including the cost to train models and obtain data, reported Bloomberg.
The FTC is looking into Microsoft’s decision to reduce funding on its own AI projects after striking a deal with OpenAI. Microsoft began investing in OpenAI in 2019 with a $1 billion (A$1.58 billion) infusion.
The move was meant to be a means for the company to catch up with its rivals such as Google who were already advancing with their own AI development plans at the time. In 2023, a month after investing an additional $10 billion (A$15.81 billion) into OpenAI, Microsoft unveiled several products infused with OpenAI technology, while also scaling back its own internal effort to develop AI technology.
The FTC is also seeking information about licensing rule changes that Microsoft said will go into effect later this year. Further queries relate to Microsoft’s data center capacity constraints to understand the costs behind cloud-computing services. Some of its other questions reportedly relate to how Microsoft licenses its software products.
Last year, Microsoft confirmed that it will sell its Office and Teams products separately globally. “We are working cooperatively with the agency,” said Alex Haurek, a Microsoft spokesman. Apart from Microsoft, the FTC is also training its sights on other tech companies including Meta and Amazon.
Beyond the US, regulators in the EU too are scrutinising Microsoft’s practices. France’s antitrust authority is investigating Microsoft following concerns it is degrading search results performed by rivals who pay to use Bing. Officials are considering whether Microsoft has abused its power in the niche market for search-engine syndication by having the Bing search engine return degraded search results.
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