Amazon AMZN and Microsoft MSFT could soon face tighter European regulation after EU officials moved closer to bringing Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure under the Digital Markets Act. The potential designation matters because it could force the two dominant cloud platforms to change how they handle interoperability, customer lock-in and self-preferencing in one of their most important markets.
The European Commission has already taken the preliminary view that AWS and Azure should be designated as gatekeepers under the DMA, describing them as the largest and second-largest cloud services in the EU and important gateways between businesses and customers. A final decision has not yet been made.
The Commission opened its investigations in November 2025 even though AWS and Azure did not meet the DMA’s normal quantitative thresholds, arguing that their market position, switching costs and ecosystem advantages could still justify designation.
If formally designated, the cloud…
