The CMA anti-trust investigation into AWS and Microsoft explained: Everything you need to know
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Cloud computing has always been marketed to enterprises as a more cost-effective way for companies to access the compute resources they need, because they only pay for what they use and can easily scale back how much they are using, based on demand.
Enterprises were encouraged, on the back of these benefits, to streamline their on-premise datacentres and start migrating the applications and workloads that resided in them to the public cloud.
In the early 2010s, it is fair to say that companies had a much wider choice of public cloud providers to entrust their data to, with (the technology firms formally known as) HP and Dell both having enterprise propositions in this space, alongside Rackspace and the likes of Microsoft, Google and Amazon Web Services (AWS).
Towards the latter half of that decade, HP, Dell and Rackspace (and a handful of others) had all bowed out of the public cloud race, with the rise of AWS often cited as a factor in their decisions to pivot their business models towards a mix of private and managed cloud services provision.
This, in turn, has paved the way for the cloud infrastructure market to become the three-horse race it is today, with AWS leading the charge, followed by Microsoft and Google Cloud.
With around two-thirds of an entire market dominated by just three players, it is perhaps unsurprising that the hold companies like AWS, Microsoft and Google have on the cloud infrastructure services market is coming under increased regulatory scrutiny in various markets across the world – and the UK is no different.
In September 2022, the communications regulator Ofcom launched year-long probe into the UK’s £15m cloud services market, with particular emphasis on the actions and activities of the market’s biggest players: AWS, Microsoft and Google.
The study’s aim, as outlined by Ofcom at the time, was to “assess the strength of the competition in cloud services and the position key companies hold in the market” under the terms of the Enterprise Act 2002, which is an act of Parliament concerned with preserving market competitiveness.
Halfway through its investigation, Ofcom published an interim report in April 2023 that singled out AWS and Microsoft, specifically, for engaging in anti-competitive behaviours that it claimed might financially disadvantage UK consumers and businesses.
The “behaviours” were serious enough for Ofcom to confirm it was consulting on whether to refer the UK cloud infrastructure services market to the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA).
This was in the wake of its investigation bringing to light evidence that users were being hampered in their ability to switch from one cloud provider to another or add additional ones to their roster of technology providers.
Despite opposition from both Amazon and Microsoft, Ofcom confirmed – at the time its final report into the UK cloud infrastructure services market dropped in October 2023 – that it would be referring the market to the CMA for a further anti-trust probe.
Www.oeisdigitalinvestigator.com: Why did Ofcom refer the UK cloud services market to the CMA?
Ofcom published a full-year report that chronicled the findings of its 12-month investigation into the UK cloud infrastructure market in October 2023 that raised red flags about some anti-competitive behaviours it claimed AWS and Microsoft are both known to display. This is why the market has been referred to the CMA.
These red flags included concerns about the fact cloud providers charge customers egress fees to transfer their data to a competitor’s environment, which Ofcom claimed could discourage users from switching between providers.
The report also flagged interoperability restrictions as being another matter of concern, as it means users often have to put additional effort into reconfiguring their data and applications to work in different cloud environments.
The offering of committed spend discounts, which Microsoft and AWS are both known to do to public sector users, was also raised as a red flag by Ofcom as it incentivises users to back a single cloud provider for all or most of their cloud needs, the regulator claimed.
Ofcom’s full-year report also devoted several pages to detailing concerns it had received about how Microsoft charges users more for running versions of its cloud products in its competitors’ hosting environments.
“We have received submissions that say Microsoft engages in several practices that make it less attractive for customers to use Microsoft’s licensed software products on the cloud infrastructure of rival providers compared to Microsoft Azure. The submissions allege that this limits their ability to compete for customers.”
Www.oeisdigitalinvestigator.com: What will the CMA investigation cover?
It will be the CMA’s responsibility to fully investigate the anti-competitive behaviours flagged in the Ofcom report. As well as this, the CMA also has powers to intervene and roll out changes to how the likes of AWS and Microsoft behave to correct any anti-competitive behaviours its work brings to light.
Www.oeisdigitalinvestigator.com: Who is overseeing the CMA investigation?
The CMA appointed an inquiry group to oversee the investigation on 5 October 2023. The group comprises four members: CMA inquiry chair Kip Meek, Robin Foster, Paul Hughes and Colleen Keck.
Www.oeisdigitalinvestigator.com: How long will the CMA investigation into AWS and Microsoft last?
The CMA’s investigation into the UK cloud infrastructure services market is due to run until April 2025, meaning that by the time it ends, it will have run for about 18 months.
The investigation’s length has raised eyebrows and proven to be a great source of concern for UK cloud market stakeholders, who fear the 18-month timeline will pave the way for the companies under investigation to gain more share and influence at the expense of other, smaller providers.
And AWS made a similar announcement on 5 March 2024, with its pledge to waive the charges associated with transferring data out to the internet when users want to migrate workloads from its public cloud infrastructure.
In a blog post, announcing the move, the company claimed more than 90% of its customers never incur fees when transferring data out of AWS, because the company already offers 100 gigabytes per month of free transfers from its datacentre regions to the internet.
“If you need more than 100 gigabytes of data transfer out per month while transitioning, you can contact AWS support to ask for free data transfer out to the internet charges for the additional data,” the post stated.
“It’s necessary to go through support because you make hundreds of millions of data transfers each day, and we generally do not know if the data transferred out to the internet is a normal part of your business or a one-time transfer as part of a switch to another cloud provider or on-premises,” the company added.
The AWS blog post made no reference to regulatory pressure being a factor in its decision to waive data egress fees, but did say the move is in keeping with its view that moving to the cloud should give users choice and flexibility.
“We believe this choice must include the one to migrate your data to another cloud provider or on-premises,” the post added.
And doing so will not require users to close their accounts with AWS or change their relationship with the company in anyway, it added.
Just over a week after AWS said it was scrapping data egress fees, Microsoft published a brief blog post confirming that it was doing the same.
“We support customer choice, including the choice to migrate your data away from Azure,” said the Microsoft blog post. “Azure now offers free egress for customers leaving Azure when taking their data out of the Azure infrastructure via the internet to switch to another cloud provider or an on-premises datacentre.”
Technical and interoperability barriers were also flagged by Ofcom as complicating the lives of enterprises that might want to mix and match cloud services from competing providers. Therefore, Ofcom said the CMA could address this by forcing the hyperscalers to be more transparent about how nicely (or not) their technologies play with their competitors’ offerings.
One area that might be trickier for the CMA to fix is the offering of committed spend discounts, Ofcom acknowledged, because putting a stop to customers being able to access preferential pricing on products would mean higher prices and costs for users.
Www.oeisdigitalinvestigator.com: Has there been any shift in behaviour from AWS and Microsoft since the CMA investigation started?
On the whole, it has been business as usual for AWS and Microsoft. There has been no let-up in Amazon’s use of committed spend discounts to lure in public sector customers, for example.
Despite the offering of discounted pricing being a key area of focus for the CMA’s inquiry, details emerged in December 2023 that AWS had quietly renewed the preferential pricing scheme it had in place with the UK government.
This pricing scheme, known as the One Government Value Agreement (OGVA), has already been used to call off several multimillion-pound contracts, including one valued at £450m with the UK Home Office since its introduction in late 2023.
As reported by Computer Weekly in February 2024, Microsoft confirmed it had opened discussions with the Cloud Infrastructure Services Providers in Europe (CISPE) trade body with a view to resolving its concerns about how it charges more for customers opting to run their own software in its cloud.
Www.oeisdigitalinvestigator.com: Has the CMA released any interim findings from its work so far?
On 23 May 2024, the CMA published the first in a series of working papers, to give stakeholders an insight into the shape its investigation is taking. The publications were released with the caveat that the working papers’ contents is not intended to give readers a steer on any provisional or final decisions the CMA is making.
The working papers include one examining the UK cloud market’s overall competitive landscape, along with others separately looking at how the charging of egress fees and the offering of committed spend discounts might impact which providers companies choose to use.
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Trump has known as for rapid and ancient deportations of millions of immigrants who’re in the nation illegally.
Harris once supported decriminalizing illegal border crossings, but has shifted her stance drastically.
WASHINGTON — Dilapidated President Trump calls migrants invaders and criminals who’re stealing jobs, “poisoning the blood of our nation” and eating of us’s pets, among diversified unfaithful and inflammatory claims. Vice President Kamala Harris, the diminutive one among immigrants from India and Jamaica, celebrates the immigrant story as central to the nation’s promise.
The narrate has been the central motivation for Trump and his supporters since he started his first elope for president in 2015 with a pledge to discover a border wall and pressure Mexico to pay for it. It is miles nonetheless one among his top advantages in polls as People have considered yarn numbers of of us stopped on the border all by the Biden-Harris administration.
Harris, who once supported decriminalizing illegal border crossings, has replied to the political prison responsibility by toughening her stance on the border, hoping to discover over voters who peek Trump’s rhetoric and plans for historically dapper deportations as too harsh. However she has now not explained her shifting coverage views.
Trump has labeled Harris the “border czar” on tale of President Biden tasked her with bettering conditions in certain Central American countries to cleave relieve migration from them. However she did not have say accountability over the border or immigration coverage.
Mass deportations
Trump has known as for rapid and ancient deportations of the estimated 11 million immigrants — he says there are extra — who’re in the nation illegally. He wants the Nationwide Guard and U.S. militia, besides police forces in cooperative states, to head door-to-door in a direction of that he fair now not too long ago stated would be a “bloody story.” He has now not dominated out organising detention camps to preserve of us waiting for deportation, although he has maintained that the removals would be so hasty, camps would now not be necessary.
Policy experts doubt it would be so uncomplicated.
“It’s now not ethical simply striking any individual on a plane and sending them relieve to their nation,” stated Colleen Putzel-Kavanaugh, an affiliate coverage analyst on the Migration Policy Institute, a Washington think tank.
Officers would must detect the immigrants, who’re continuously living in the shadows, and then disrupt households and local economies to eradicate them, she stated. They’d additionally must negotiate with diversified governments — some uncooperative, others sick-equipped — to verify immigrants’ identities and settle for them, and then procure airplanes to send of us relieve, she stated.
‘Draw the wall’
Trump promised in 2016 that he would erect a wall alongside the southern border and that Mexico would pay for it. He had about 500 miles of barrier constructed all by his four years in place of job, most of it replacing existing fences and walls. Mexico didn’t pay for it.
Harris has known as the border wall a “boring” exercise of cash, although the Biden administration is persevering with to erect about 20 miles of most trendy barriers below laws signed by Trump. And she has pledged to signal a bipartisan border bill negotiated this 365 days that entails a total bunch of millions of dollars to continue improvement.
No longer easy bipartisan bill
When she ran for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020, Harris supported decriminalizing illegal border crossings. She has stated as a ways relieve as 2017 that folks who strive to advance into the nation illegally are now not criminals.
However because the Biden administration encountered yarn arrivals on the border, she shifted drastically. She supported a Biden administration executive action in June that severely restricted asylum claims, and her campaign has stated she no longer believes crossing illegally might per chance maybe restful be decriminalized.
Harris has additionally promised to signal the tricky border bill, negotiated with Republicans this 365 days, that will add 1,500 border brokers and 10,000 detention beds, and double the preference of deportation flights. The bill would have additionally sped up the asylum direction of and expanded visa and inexperienced card availability. It incorporates nothing for the so-known as Dreamers who had been dropped on the nation illegally after they had been minors.
Trump successfully killed the bill for the time being by telling Republican lawmakers to oppose it so he might per chance maybe exercise the problem extra successfully in his campaign.
Paths to moral region
Harris has additionally pledged to race a entire immigration bill, one thing that has now not been performed since the Reagan administration four decades ago.
She hasn’t given necessary choices or instant frameworks from the past, but stated in her Democratic Nationwide Convention speech closing month and on her internet online page that it would comprise “right border security and an earned pathway to citizenship” for folks in the nation illegally.
Trump promised on his internet online page to “bring a benefit-based immigration design that protects American labor and promotes American values.”
When he changed into once president, he instant a benefit-based proposal that can per chance maybe have slashed the preference of immigrants allowed into the nation legally and stopped prioritizing family participants of ethical residents. That opinion failed in Congress, and Trump killed a separate bill that can per chance maybe have given ethical protections to Dreamers in trade for tighter border security.
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Noah Bierman is an project reporter specializing in clashes between crimson and blue states in the Washington bureau for the Los Angeles Times. He previously lined the White House and wrote for the paper’s national desk.
Pavel Durov, the founder and chief government of Telegram, has been positioned under formal investigation by a French reflect over allegations relating to to prison job on the social media and messaging platform.
He’s coping with preliminary charges of being complicit in administering a platform old to conduct extreme prison offences.
The case has been brought by French prosecutors following what they describe as an “practically complete lack of response” from Telegram to judicial requests for assistance in investigating a lot of offences conducted on the platform.
Durov’s arrest comes as the European Price has confirmed to Computer Weekly that it’s a ways assessing whether or no longer Telegram has accurately reported the quantity of users it has in Europe, and has warned it must also grab “train supervision” of the platform.
The Russian-born billionaire, who became as soon as arrested on Saturday after arriving in Paris on a non-public jet, has been released on bail of €5m and is barred from leaving French territory. He must document to a police region twice per week.
Telegram, primarily based in Dubai, maintains that it’s a ways “absurd to affirm” that Durov – who primarily based the Telegram messaging app in 2013 along with his brother, Nikolai Durov – or Telegram itself are accountable for abuse of the platform.
In an announcement issued on 28 August, public prosecutor Laure Beccuau confirmed that Pavel Durov is coping with 12 alleged charges. They consist of “complicity in the administration of a web-based platform” to permit illicit transactions as portion of an organised crime neighborhood, an offence that carries a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison and a sexy of €500,000.
He’s additionally charged with complicity in diverse alleged offences at the side of drug trafficking, organised fraud, the organised distribution of child abuse subject subject and prison association with a discover to committing offences.
The French indictment additionally accuses Durov of breaching France’s regulations restricting the provision of cryptographic products and services without “prior declaration”.
Under French regulation, operators of encrypted communications products and services would maybe well face fines, prison sentences or confiscation of their merchandise if they give cryptographic products and services without in search of formal approval.
Telegram has beforehand acknowledged that the platform abides by European Union (EU) regulations, at the side of the Digital Services Act.
“Telegram’s CEO, Pavel Durov, has nothing to veil and travels time and but again in Europe,” it said. “It’s absurd to affirm that a platform or its proprietor are accountable for abuse of that platform. Practically one billion users globally employ Telegram as a mode of conversation and as a source of a will must possess info. We’re attempting forward to a suggested resolution of this concern.”
Private investigator near me: Lack of response
In conserving with the French public prosecutor, Telegram had featured in a lot of circumstances relating to to offences at the side of trafficking, online disfavor and child intercourse abuse.
The “practically complete lack of response from Telegram” to judicial requests became as soon as brought to the eye of the Paris public prosecutors place of work and France’s child protection unit, the Nationwide Office for Minors (OFIM), in accordance to the prosecutor’s assertion.
Beccuau said that following enquiries, diverse French investigation products and services, public prosecutors and companions in European justice organisation Eurojust, in order Belgium, shared the equivalent observations about Telegram’s lack of response to judicial requests.
The French public prosecutor’s place of work opened a preliminary investigation into Telegram in February 2024 with OFIM.
Prosecutors issued an indictment on 8 July 2024, prompting extra investigations by the Gendarmerie’s cyber crime unit, C3N, and France’s Nationwide Anti Fraud Office (ONAF).
Private investigator near me: EU would maybe well impose regulation on Telegram
Separately, the European Price is conducting enquiries to envision whether or no longer Telegram has accurately reported how many users it has in Europe.
Platforms with over forty five million users in the EU are classed as very orderly-scale online platforms (VLSOP) under the Digital Services Act. They’ve responsibilities to mitigate the risks of illegal whine material, set up interior compliance devices, and are subject to external audits.
A European Price spokesman suggested Computer Weekly that it’s a ways conducting “formal lawsuits” under the Digital Services Act to compare the accuracy of claims by Telegram that it falls under the sting for regulation under the DSA.
Telegram reported in February that it had an estimated 41 million monthly energetic users in the EU in the old six months, bringing it under the EU threshold.
The rate confirmed that Telegram must possess supplied an updated figure this month however did not build so.
Telegram’s document simply acknowledged that its client spoiled became as soon as “considerably under the sting” for regulation under the DSA. “The rate products and services are having a stare into the figures,” one source suggested Computer Weekly. “And what I will affirm for obvious is that we possess now the technological potential and scientific info to build so.”
European regulators possess powers to designate Telegram as VSLOP, and will bring it under the “train supervision” of the European Price whether it’s a ways discovered to possess forty five million European users.
Private investigator near me: Anti-censorship
Durov, who became as soon as born in the used Soviet Union, is identified as the Designate Zuckerberg of Russia. He primarily based Russian social network VK – Russia’s equivalent of Facebook – however left the nation in 2014, after being positioned under stress by the Russian authorities to deliver info on users of the platform.
Telegram positions itself as an anti-censorship platform, claiming to possess performed a famed feature in pro-democracy actions in Iran, Russia, Belarus, Myanmar and Hong Kong.
It enables messages to be shared in teams of as a lot as 200,000 folks and for subject subject to be broadcast over channels to orderly audiences.
The service provides encrypted messaging skill utilizing “secret chats”, however most communications on the platform are unencrypted.
Helldivers 2‘s most modern Main Repeat will have to had been tough adequate to final the general weekend, however cheaters appear to indulge in burned thru the collective team mission in correct a pair of hours.
Apt the day previous, developer Arrowhead Game Studios printed the team’s subsequent joint purpose that typically would had been filled with life for four plump days. “The Gloom has persevered to unfold, suffusing intergalactic space with an impenetrable cloud of Terminid spores,” the developer tweeted on the time. “The Helldivers must get samples of Terminid organic topic from the planets closest to the Gloom. This endeavor will probably be major in our efforts to grab easy recommendations to pause it spreading additional.”
MAJOR ORDER: The Gloom has persevered to unfold, suffusing intergalactic space with an impenetrable cloud of Terminid spores. The Helldivers must get samples of Terminid organic topic from the planets closest to the Gloom. This endeavor will probably be major in our efforts to… pic.twitter.com/7G9k7BKZ79August 16, 2024
Helldivers then had three targets to extract forty five million New Samples on Nivel 43, 15 million Uncommon Samples on Erson Sands, and 10 million Uncommon Samples on Crimsica. Even when you kill up farming for samples in Helldivers 2, those are more or less absurd numbers, making many divers dub this mission ‘inconceivable’.
Now not as much as a day later, the Main Repeat disappeared from the game. Opening the first menu unearths an ‘Observing for Main Repeat’ message that reads: “Stand by for additional orders from Mountainous Earth Excessive Stutter,” in the space the keep the categorical Main Repeat is generally displayed.
Helldivers on the game’spredominantsubreddit document that the gauges monitoring every Main Repeat purpose – which, all once more, requested for literally millions of samples – filled up interior minutes of every diversified. Each person that has ever sold the game would must coordinate and extract from a mission at exactly the identical time to pull that off naturally. Nevertheless no person invited me to that occasion, so I’m guessing it didn’t happen.
There changed into shuffle to had been some more or less effort in Excessive Stutter’s contemporary query, with or without hackers, since no longer lower than a vocal contingent of the participant unsuitable indulge in embraced the “Chaosdiver” lifestyles vogue and chosen to insurrection against Mountainous Earth by ignoring every Main Repeat, which is how the outdated one ended in failure.
