European Commission lines up Amazon and Microsoft for cloud gatekeeper status
theregister.com55 points by Bender 2 days ago
55 points by Bender 2 days ago
Seems like good news - market share of AWS and Azure in EU is huge, so I naturally support efforts to kurb power of such duopoly.
But what would be practical effects of DMA on AWS? Who is the customer, who is the vendor?
Who’s on each side of the gate?
On one side, consumers. On the other, vendors.
Consumers of what? Vendors of what?
Are you sure you know what AWS is?
A vendor of web services, predominantly to enterprises & institutions.
I’m not trying to be obtuse here. For Apple it’s obvious: They’re a “gatekeeper” between software and hardware makers and iPhone users. If you want to offer your software or hardware to those users, Apple has to let your products through the gate.
If I make SSDs that aren’t the ones Amazon uses, does Amazon have to make it possible for me to use their data centers to rent those SSDs to enterprise customers via EBS?
10% of Microsoft's turnover is $28b, 10% of amazon is $71b
The goal here is to make sure these companies obey the law though, which big tech companies seem to think is optional.
Really should be the turnover amount for operations originating from the EU, not worldwide.
Why?
The US likes to flex it's muscle by pushing other governments around on behalf of its commercial interests.
I think it's well past time for Canada to either formally pursue toes with the EU or pursue alignment with EU consumer protection legislation.
Middle powers unite!
The problem is nobody believe those company would ever hand over 10% or even 1% of their turnover to the EU.
The EU should be careful with those kind of threats because in the world that is taking shape I can really imagine MS telling them one day that none of their Windows is gonna boot tomorrow if they don't calm down. The EU at large is totally dependent on those companies so who is really fearing who?
Thankfully MS also has a policy of not trying very hard to prevent illicit distribution of their software, so the worst they can really do is brick your machine on patch Tuesday, which is just the standard risk you run every time anyway.
Like they didn’t make Apple pay /s
The final closure came in 2025: Ireland confirmed it received nearly €14.25 billion (about $15.5 billion) from the account’s final closure https://appleinsider.com/articles/25/07/15/apple-and-ireland...
And when everyone is a gatekeeper … no one is
What are you even trying to say?
that before long, everyone will be declared a gatekeeper, just so EU can control everything as they please.
Ok, and what would you say is the problem, there?
https://digital-markets-act.ec.europa.eu/about-dma_en
All I see is more interoperability, fairer competition, more consumer rights, etc. If you are against this sort of regulation and a rational being, I envy you because you must either be oligarch-level rich, or in a happy bubble disconnected from world-affecting current events.
Why shouldn't our sovereign government control things as they please? That's the whole point of sovereignty - people elect government, government makes rules.
That's not how that's supposed to work!
Democratically elected governments should have no say as to how many billions of dollars of market activity tech oligarchs are entitled to capture and redirect towards their very noble goal of winning the competition to see who can build the biggest yacht.
And, of course, building bunkers for when enough of the general population eventually catches onto and gets tired of the grift...
Some baseline needs to be a established, because small palyers can't play with the same rules of larger ones.
And it is absolutely the role of the government to regulate the market.
I believe you missed the dripping sarcasm
Eh, too many people say very similar shit in HN with a straight face. Quite a few here is quite happy to bow to their corporate masters.
I can't tell if parent was being sarcastic.
I agree, and originally that was my take, until I got to
"very noble goal of winning the competition to see who can build the biggest yacht."
The simps tend not to say the quiet part out loud