Japan’s competition watchdog has conducted a raid on the local offices of Microsoft as part of an investigation into a suspected violation of anti-monopoly laws linked to its Azure cloud platform.
According to a source with direct knowledge of the matter, Japan’s Japan Fair Trade Commission (JFTC) carried out the inspection to examine whether Microsoft improperly restricted customers using its Azure cloud services from accessing or integrating rival cloud platforms. The source, who declined to be identified as the investigation is not public, said regulators are assessing whether contractual or technical conditions effectively limited competition in Japan’s growing cloud computing market.
The JFTC declined to comment on the ongoing probe. A spokesperson for Microsoft Japan confirmed that the company is fully cooperating with the regulator’s requests. The source added that Japanese authorities are also expected to seek clarification from Microsoft’s U.S. parent company as part of the broader antitrust review.
At the center of the investigation are allegations that Microsoft Japan may have imposed conditions that limited access to certain popular services on competing cloud platforms, potentially restricting customer choice and disadvantaging rival cloud service providers. If substantiated, such practices could raise concerns under Japan’s Anti-Monopoly Act, particularly regarding exclusionary conduct and abuse of a dominant market position.
The development comes amid increasing global regulatory scrutiny of large technology companies’ cloud computing practices. Competition authorities in the United Kingdom, the European Union, and the United States have been reviewing licensing terms, interoperability restrictions, and market concentration in the cloud infrastructure sector. In Brazil, the national antitrust authority recently opened an administrative investigation into Microsoft’s local unit over issues related to its cloud computing services.
The probe underscores intensifying oversight of hyperscale cloud providers as regulators worldwide examine whether platform operators are leveraging market power in enterprise software and infrastructure services to limit competition in adjacent markets.
