Amazon’s cloud services division, Amazon Web Services (AWS), is scrapping fees for customers and businesses who want to switch a rival provider as regulators continue to crack down on the practices of cloud providers.
The move follows Google’s recent announcement that it was halting fees it had long charged customers for transfer.
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“We believe in customer choice, including moving your data out of AWS,” the company wrote in a blog post.
Customers who wish to extract all their data from AWS will be able to do so without any charges, the company said.
It comes as global lawmakers and regulators have intensified their scrutiny of cloud service providers.
The EU’s Data Act set out aims to facilitate the easy switching of customers from one provider to another, with rules for tech companies to remove any obstacles for the customer.
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By GlobalDataUK antitrust authorities launched a probe into Microsoft and AWS last year after Ofcom found “significant concerns” around the companies.
The concerns included high switching fees, committed spend discounts and technical restrictions on data sharing.
During the authority’s initial investigation, Ofcom found that AWS and Microsoft Azure had a combined UK market share of between 60% and 70%. Google, the next closest competitor, had a 5% to 10% share.
As research and analyst company GlobalData states in its Thematic Research: Cloud Computing 2024 report, regulators are concerned that the world’s largest internet ecosystems behave in an anti-competitive and monopolistic manner.
However, regulators have struggled to address the challenges of the digital economy due to existing competition laws not being conceived for the digital era.
Global competition authorities have also found it difficult to argue a reason to intervene when most of the services are offered initially free of charge, despite noting how much data the customer needs to provide.
According to GlobalData forecasts, the total cloud computing market will be worth $1.4trn in 2027, having grown at a compound annual growth rate of 17.1% from $638.6bn in 2022.
