El sector cloud ante el Derecho de la Competenciael próximo reto regulatorio de los ecosistemas digitales

Résumé

The cloud computing sector has experienced dizzying development in recent years and is undoubtedly a driver of the digitisation of the economy and business growth. However, both its structural characteristics (high degree of concentration) and some of the practices of the main cloud service providers (bundling, self-preference, etc.) pose a risk to maintaining effective competition in this market. For this reason, in the past year 2023 there have been various reports and actions by the competition authorities in Europe, and in Spain, which are examined in this paper, paying special attention to the software licensing policy pursued by Microsoft, which we consider to be an anti-competitive practice. In this respect, in addition to the «classic» prohibition of abuse of dominance (art. 102 TFEU), the suitability of sectorial regulation, such as the recent DMA or EU Data Act, is examined.