US antitrust regulators launch an investigation into Microsoft

On November 28th, Jinshi Data News, sources said the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has launched an antitrust investigation against Microsoft (MSFT.O), covering the company's cloud computing and software licensing businesses, as well as network security and artificial intelligence products. After more than a year of informal interviews with Microsoft's competitors and business partners, law enforcement officials have drafted a request for hundreds of pages of information from Microsoft. FTC antitrust lawyers will meet with Microsoft's competitors next week to gather more information. One focus of the current investigation is Microsoft's bundling of its popular office productivity and security software with its cloud products. Following a series of network security incidents involving Microsoft products, FTC has intensified its scrutiny of Microsoft's cloud computing business. Microsoft's missteps in network security, combined with its status as a government contractor, are seen by FTC as posing issues of market influence. Part of the investigation focuses on Microsoft's practices related to security software Microsoft Entra ID (previously known as Azure Active Directory), which helps authenticate user logins for cloud-based software.