Microsoft faces antitrust investigation over CrowdStrike incident

Microsoft Corporation has once again found itself under a major antitrust investigation initiated by the US Federal Trade Commission. The issue concerns several areas at once — AI, software licensing, cloud products and cybersecurity.

According to Bloomberg, a year before sending a request to Microsoft, the regulator's employees held several meetings with the corporation's competitors and business partners. It is noteworthy that the FTC already had claims against the company after the purchase of Activision Blizzard in 2023. However, this time the reason was a large-scale failure of CrowdStrike this summer, when due to an update error, Windows «fell» en masse around the world.

It is reported that antitrust authorities are especially interested in Microsoft's desire to combine office software and cloud services. Since the corporation is a major supplier to various US government agencies, incidents like CrowdStrike have caused serious mistrust of Microsoft. According to the FTC report, the introduction of cloud services could lead to a «domino effect» in the event of further outages.

Earlier, another tech giant faced accusations of monopoly. The US Department of Justice intends to force Google to sell the Chrome browser in order to improve the situation in the search engine market. Meanwhile, Microsoft's competitor in the market, Sony, is negotiating the purchase of Kadokawa's company.