Relationship with OpenAI
While much of the initial query, and subsequent ones, have focused on licensing and bundling, the FTC is also looking into the company’s relationship with OpenAI, and raising questions about Microsoft’s data centers, capacity constraints, and AI spending and research.
Notably, the tech giant’s initial $1 billion investment in OpenAI has grown into a multi-billion-dollar partnership, with Microsoft rolling out ChatGPT-powered features across its product line in 2023. The FTC is examining whether the relationship is an undisclosed merger that should have been subject to antitrust review.
Further, the federal agency is scrutinizing Microsoft’s alleged decision to scale back its own AI research following the OpenAI investment, potentially reducing competition.
Tactics ‘remarkably the same’
Ultimately, all of this recalls the industry-shaping 1990s US federal investigation into Microsoft’s monopoly of desktop software and web browsers. A federal judge ruled at the time that the company deliberately built the Internet Explorer (IE) browser into Windows to edge out rivals like the now-defunct Netscape.
And, analysts note, it’s an indication that Microsoft hasn’t learned from those past lessons.
“While technology and trends may have evolved since Microsoft’s first anti-trust case in 1998, where they were forced to unbundle IE from Windows OS, their tactics have stayed remarkably the same,” Bickley noted.
