Microsoft CID probe, Nvidia ruling and Google remedies: antitrust's new front lines

Microsoft spent years on the sidelines of the antitrust revival. The Verge reported on 1 June that civil investigative demands, or CIDs, sent by the Federal Trade Commission to at least half a dozen of Microsoft's competitors suggest that run may be ending. The documents, which The Verge says it obtained from an industry source granted anonymity to discuss nonpublic material, ask about Microsoft's business agreements, licensing terms, pricing, discounts and product interoperability.

They generally run past 15 pages and more than 15 questions, often with long sub-parts. According to that source, the stated goal is to establish whether Microsoft used unfair methods of competition in cloud, software and related services in violation of the FTC Act.

Microsoft spokesperson Alex Haurek told The Verge the company is "cooperating fully with the FTC and believe our practices promote competition while delivering the innovative products our customers expect." He pointed to Google as "a clear example" of cloud competition, noting it grew 63 percent year over year against rivals including AWS, which he called the largest cloud provider. The FTC did not respond to a request for comment.

What the CIDs actually ask

The questions cover organizational charts, marketing plans and roadmaps. They ask how companies bundle features, how they price and discount, and how profitable those products are. Other lines of inquiry ask about the costs of entering or expanding in markets where Microsoft operates. That reads like an attempt to map barriers to entry.

"This kind of information gathering tends to occur at the earlier stages of an investigation," said George Washington University law professor and former FTC Chair William Kovacic.

The CID topics also touch AI, including competition against products that bundle services with an AI or software product such as Microsoft 365. Kovacic told The Verge the questions suggest the agency is working out which players matter and how important bundling is. The AI references, he said, could point to a possible illegal tying arrangement or a durable competitive advantage.

Nothing is guaranteed. The probe began under the Biden administration in 2024 and continued under President Donald Trump. FTC staff will decide whether to recommend a complaint, and the agency's two commissioners would vote. Both are Republicans, so an end to the matter could come quietly, with no minority commissioner to object in public.

Google's 2023 submission to a separate FTC cloud inquiry accused Microsoft of using dominance elsewhere to "give their own cloud products an unearned advantage." Customers have complained anonymously of retaliation fears that 2019 licensing changes made running Windows on non-Azure infrastructure far costlier. A 2024 ProPublica investigation found Microsoft used similar leverage across US government agencies through free cybersecurity upgrades tied to Azure.

The Verge notes government contracts and cybersecurity were not among the CID topics it reviewed. Haurek said agencies were "free to engage with other vendors."

Elsewhere, the rulings are already landing

China's State Administration for Market Regulation said on Monday that Nvidia violated the country's antitrust law by failing to fully comply with conditions attached to its 2020 purchase of Mellanox, according to Ars Technica. The preliminary finding could bring fines of 1 percent to 10 percent of the chipmaker's previous year's sales, or forced changes to business practices.

Ars Technica reported that SAMR reached its conclusion weeks before announcing it, and that two people familiar said the timing was meant to give Beijing leverage in trade talks with Washington. The investigation opened in December, a week after the US imposed tougher export controls on advanced high-bandwidth memory chips and chipmaking equipment. Nvidia bought Mellanox for $6.9 billion.

In the US, Google's search remedy trial is the bigger structural test. Ars Technica reported in April that the Department of Justice is seeking divestiture of Chrome, an unbundling of Android and a ban on the default search placement deals that pay Apple and Mozilla billions of dollars a year. Google has proposed looser exclusivity and more freedom for Android device makers on preloads. It lost the liability phase, with the court finding it violated the Sherman Antitrust Act by "willfully acquiring and maintaining monopoly power."

The backdrop is messy. Google has lost the Epic-backed app store case and a ruling that it abused its ad tech monopoly, and the app store remedies are on hold pending appeal. Mozilla and Apple are expected to testify for Google's position. The DOJ will likely argue their testimony is compromised by how much money they take from the deals.

There is also the Microsoft precedent. A court found more than two decades ago that Microsoft had an illegal PC operating system monopoly. That history is why the new CID questions matter. They are the earliest public signal of whether the FTC wants to build a case, and the agency is under no obligation to finish one.