Amazon's cloud unit faces antitrust scrutiny from FTC

According to foreign media reports , the US Federal Trade Commission ( FTC ) is conducting an antitrust review of Amazon's cloud computing business .

According to people familiar with the matter , FTC investigators have contacted some companies in the past few months to collect information on competition issues related to Amazon Web Services . After the news was reported by foreign media, Amazon's stock price fell nearly 1% to $3,381 that day .

According to the financial report released earlier by Amazon, Amazon's cloud computing department is its main source of profit. In the third quarter, the cloud computing department brought Amazon $ 1.61 billion in revenue, an increase of 39% compared with the same period last year .

As Amazon's cloud business grows rapidly, Lina Khan, head of the U.S. Federal Trade Commission and former Columbia Law School professor, has also set her sights on the monopolistic behavior of these technology giants. She warned that giant companies such as Amazon pose a threat to competition in the digital economy .

One question currently under consideration by the Federal Trade Commission is whether Amazon has an incentive to discriminate against software companies that sell products to AWS customers and compete with Amazon . The findings suggest that Amazon may penalize companies that work with other cloud service providers and favor those that work exclusively with itself .

The FTC’s investigation into Amazon began during the administration of former Trump chairman Joe Simons, and Amazon has provided information in response to the agency’s request, according to people familiar with the matter .

Amazon dominates the market with its cloud computing services , which provide the storage and computing power needed to run applications. Analysts estimate that Amazon's cloud computing system is several times larger than its biggest rival, Microsoft Corp.'s Azure.

This is not the first time that Amazon's cloud computing division has been targeted. As early as August this year , Amazon's cloud computing division received a sky-high fine of US$888.6 million from the European Union for allegedly violating the EU's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

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