EU To Soon Classify AWS and Azure As Gatekeepers Under DSA (heise.de) 39
The European Commission is reportedly preparing to provisionally classify Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure as "gatekeepers" under the Digital Markets Act, bringing cloud infrastructure under the law's stricter competition rules for the first time. The designation could require greater interoperability and data portability, making it easier for customers to switch providers, with a final decision expected by the end of 2026. Heise reports: This investigation began in November 2025, when the EU targeted the cloud power of US tech giants. The trigger was outages in cloud services with sometimes significant impacts on other internet services. Shortly before, an approximately 15-hour outage of the AWS cloud in the US meant that not only Amazon's own streaming services but also Atlassian, Docker, Epic Games, and the Signal messenger were unavailable or severely restricted. Shortly thereafter, Microsoft Azure also struggled with an outage, preventing air passengers from checking in and interrupting votes in the Scottish Parliament.
As a result, European antitrust authorities have also scrutinized cloud services under the Digital Markets Act for the first time. The major cloud providers, primarily from the US, have so far evaded the EU's Digital Markets Act because a large part of their business is handled through corporate contracts. This makes it difficult to determine the number of individual users. However, this is one of the EU's most important criteria for determining the market power of companies. [...] As gatekeepers, AWS and Azure would be obliged to ensure interoperability and data portability. This would, for example, simplify switching cloud providers and allow customers to link other services with AWS or Azure clouds, instead of being limited to AWS and Azure offerings. Significant fines could also be imposed if the cloud services are found to be in violation of existing regulations.
As a result, European antitrust authorities have also scrutinized cloud services under the Digital Markets Act for the first time. The major cloud providers, primarily from the US, have so far evaded the EU's Digital Markets Act because a large part of their business is handled through corporate contracts. This makes it difficult to determine the number of individual users. However, this is one of the EU's most important criteria for determining the market power of companies. [...] As gatekeepers, AWS and Azure would be obliged to ensure interoperability and data portability. This would, for example, simplify switching cloud providers and allow customers to link other services with AWS or Azure clouds, instead of being limited to AWS and Azure offerings. Significant fines could also be imposed if the cloud services are found to be in violation of existing regulations.
"Progressive" is a euphemism (Score:1)
Europe offers a progressive approach to work-life balance through widespread four-day work week initiatives and strict labor laws that make firing employees significantly harder than in the US. These rights prioritize job security and personal well-being over corporate flexibility. Who would have thought it had a side effect of being less productive?
Re: The EU is a SAFETY CULT && Rapist Migr (Score:2)
Re: "Progressive" is a euphemism (Score:3)
4dayweek.io (Score:3)
According to https://4dayweek.io/countries [4dayweek.io] it looks like the average work week is under 40 hours for most European countries.
Now sure you can stretch 32.5 hours out over 5 days working 6.5 hours a day, but I am assuming a minimum of 8 hour work days; so less than 40 hours is not filling 5 days.
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Your assumption is wrong, is a *maximum* of 8 hour work days.
Full days work (Score:2)
Maximum? Most 4 day a week work plans I have seen still require 40 hours a week meaning four ten hour days.
I find that to be very appealing and perhaps more productive than five 8 hour work days.
However, anything less than 8 hours of work in a day is not what I what consider a full day of work by any measure.
Someone who works six four hour days is certainly not achieving a six day work week, but instead can perhaps at best claim 3 days of work spread out over 6 days.
But either way, if we set it at a maximum
Re: "Progressive" is a euphemism (Score:2)
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We also have pensions, weekends, maximum working hours per day and no child labor. And public fire departments.
All of those were introduced by socialists.
Re:The people conquering the EU don't care about t (Score:4, Interesting)
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Simple. Europeans who could do so come to the US to do so.
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Because American tech giants keep coming in and buying out any European tech initiative and shutting it down to eliminate competition.
Why aren't you a member of the billionaire ruling class yet? Hint: it's because they are stacking the deck against you, just like any tech giant does to a not giant regardless of where they are from.
Posted from my Finish made OS,
Other nations will follow (Score:5, Interesting)
When IT becomes a national soverienty issue, these kinds of regulations will become absolutely essential.
Because yeah ,, a cloud outage in the US shutting down government services in Europe and elsewhere is a security problem since it could also be done maliciously.
Think of a hypothetical where the alternative systems to GPS (American) didn't exist (e.g. GLONASS and Galileo) and the US decided to shut down positioning service in the EU because (of reasons that aren't important) . It would fuck with air travel, emergency services, people navigating cities, all that. The lack of a domestic or alternative provider would be massively disruptive.
Same with these cloud services ..
Re:Other nations will follow (Score:5, Interesting)
a cloud outage in the US shutting down government services in Europe and elsewhere
My guess is that the US companies have data centers in Europe so an outage in the US would not affect Europe.
However I do not think that negates your point of being dependent on a foreign company or failing to have redundancy.
Your example of redundant Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) is a great example of redundancy benefiting everyone; I love having a GNSS chip that supports all three chips even if I am in the US.
Although cloud providers have always felt like they had pretty good interoperability and data portability to me; I just move my docker contain from AWS to Azure to Google Cloud to OVH; or have one on each cloud ready to go and one in my garage and my mom's basement just in case?
The issue is the services mentioned are centralized. My video streaming should be Bittorrent not Amazon or Netflix, my game server anyone can host not on Epic servers, and my communication pier-to-pier not all connected by a central host like Signal. Not sure why Docker made that list, just make a mirror of their repos and binaries? Really the list of services in the summary/article are kind of silly, most are not critical and the providers have a great incentive to make sure they are provided and redundant so not to lose customers.
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And, as you pointed out, it isn't actually hard to migra
Agreed (Score:2)
I think you and I are in agreement.
In general I would assert that government regulation is absolutely the wrong solution.
This appears be no exception to that rule and driven by ulterior motives.
I am sure their is some incompetence on the law makers side, they do not understand how cloud computing works; but even if they did all they want is more power anyway.
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I think you are having a "see the forest if not for the trees" moment.
Governments aren't supposed to follow industry practice or business needs when it comes to national security. They need to act to protect their nation more than a company.
regulations requiring some data to be held physically domestically and isolated authentication become their purview when their failure can plunge a country into chaos, which can happen with something as simple as say a transit system not accepting payment.
Re: Other nations will follow (Score:5, Informative)
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My guess is that the US companies have data centers in Europe so an outage in the US would not affect Europe.
In the world of dynamically assigned resourcing there's always an ability to shutdown everything everywhere at once. Not one major tech company has to date not had a major global outage (typically short) caused by some configuration snafu which replicated across the globe.
What about the people put out of business? (Score:2)
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Yes, if those companies are American.
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Is the EU trying to shut them down?
I'm trying to figure out if you're serious. In case you are: no. I work for such a company BTW.
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Is the EU trying to shut them down?
I'm trying to figure out if you're serious. In case you are: no. I work for such a company BTW.
What will your company do, and will your job continue to exist, when it becomes a matter of clicking on a destination service name, and then clicking the begin transfer button?
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EU capacity (Score:1)
The EU, or Europe, does not appear to have the capacity to do everything it wants to do. At the moment, it wants to have super generous social welfare, vastly increase its military to defend against Russia, zero out its dependence on fossil fuels, zero out its nuclear power, replace every US service it uses by investing capital equal to US to provide those services, and at the same time fight off competition from China, all with a shrinking population of Europeans, and invasion of migrants from 3rd world
What are they trying to do? (Score:2)
So, what problem are they trying t
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why are they doing it?
The existing law is every online service with over 50 million EU users is a gatekeeper. They started with social media which are easy because they boast a user count. Now they reach cloud which make sit more difficult to count users that use the services implemented on these clouds. We don't have yet the announcement yet, it is likely they will also classify EU cloud providers as well, not only AWS and Azure.
Are you...? (Score:2)
I am Vinz, Vinz Clortho, Keymaster of Gozer...Volguus Zildrohoar, Lord of the Seboullia.
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DSA or DMA? (Score:2)