CISPE has argued since the earliest discussions on the Digital Markets Act that cloud computing must fall within its scope, and that any dominant provider should be designated. We therefore welcome the Commission’s preliminary finding that AWS and Azure meet the gatekeeper criteria — the first time cloud infrastructure has been brought under the DMA. With three US hyperscalers controlling roughly two-thirds of the European market, capturing two of them is a significant and overdue step.
But the omission of the third, Google Cloud, is a structural flaw. Though smaller than its US rivals, Google remains a goliath beside Europe’s providers, and its position in the cloud-and-AI market is surging: in little over a year Gemini has become the world’s second-largest AI assistant, with nearly 750 million monthly active users and the fastest growth of any major assistant — while the Commission’s assessment appears to lag the market. Leaving Google outside the same ex ante obligations hands it unfair leverage on two fronts: over the European players it already dwarfs, and over the very rivals, AWS and Azure, the designation is meant to constrain.
All three dominant providers must be designated without favour. Google Cloud must be added as a gatekeeper on identical terms, so that the DMA delivers fair and equal treatment rather than creating, through a single omission, the very distortion it was written to prevent.
