LONDON (ShareCast) - (Sharecast News) - Amazon has reportedly seen the US Federal Trade Commission broaden its scrutiny beyond the group's retail operations to cover its cloud-computing unit.
Antitrust enforcers were said to have approached software companies regarding practices within Amazon Web Services, according to Bloomberg sources.

The FTC could potentially be looking into whether or not Amazon has an incentive to discriminate against those software companies which sell their products to AWS clients.

AWS made up roughly 60% of Amazon's operating income during the company's last trading year and sells a vast array of products which run on top of its basic services - ranging from databases to machine-learning tools and data-warehousing products.

The FTC's enquiry into Amazon was but one of a spree of antitrust investigations sweeping across the technology industry, with authorities at both the Federal and state level also looking into the likes of Google parent company Alphabet and Facebook.

As of 1350 GMT, Amazon shares were up 0.65% in pre-market trading at $1,772.08 each.

Email this article to a friend

or share it with one of these popular networks:

• DIGG
• FACEBOOK
• STUMBLEUPON
• MIXX
• YAHOO BUZZ
• DELICIOUS
• REDDIT
• NEWSVINE