On June 3, Microsoft fell 3.12% in regular trading, trading at $427.645/share, with trading volume of $51.2 billion. The decline comes amid reports that the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) may launch a new antitrust investigation into the company.
According to recent reports, the FTC is examining whether Microsoft engages in exclusionary practices in its Azure cloud services business and whether its influence over the artificial intelligence industry has grown excessive. The FTC has reportedly issued civil investigative demands to at least six companies that compete with Microsoft, collecting commercial agreements, licensing arrangements, and product interoperability documents. Once the investigation concludes, FTC staff will decide whether to file a lawsuit, subject to a vote by two commissioners.
The probe is said to focus partly on licensing changes Microsoft made in 2019 that significantly raised the cost of running Windows on non-Azure infrastructure. Competitors including Google have previously accused Microsoft of leveraging its market dominance to give its own cloud products an unfair advantage and lock in customers.
Within the Systems Software sector, broad weakness was observed. Oracle fell 5.24%, Palo Alto Networks fell 5.99%, ServiceNow fell 4.65%, CrowdStrike fell 1.94%, and NEBIUS fell 0.38%.
(The above content is based on publicly available market information, generated by a program or algorithm, and is intended solely as a stock movement alert. It does not constitute investment advice or a basis for trading decisions.)
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