Part 3 of a sourced series. Every fact links to its source — mostly regulators' own pages and the companies' own pricing. My opinions are marked. Nothing here alleges a crime; the striking part is that it's all legal and disclosed. Corrections policy at the bottom; an evidence explorer lets you check every number.
The cheapest direction is in
Loading your data into a big cloud is free. Getting it back out is not.
AWS charges nothing for data transfer into its cloud, then bills outbound transfer to the internet at roughly $0.09 per GB after a 100 GB monthly free tier (AWS pricing; CloudZero).
That asymmetry has a name in the industry: data gravity. Cheap to fall in, costly to climb out. The more you store, the heavier the exit bill — and the less likely you are to leave.
This is the quiet engine of the lock-in economy. Not a contract you sign in anger. A pricing structure that makes staying the path of least resistance.
The UK regulator took a hard look
Britain's Competition and Markets Authority spent over a year investigating the cloud market. Its provisional findings were blunt.
The CMA provisionally found that egress fees and technical barriers are features of the market that harm competition, with AWS and Microsoft each holding up to 40% of UK customer cloud spend (CMA provisional findings).
It went further on software. The CMA provisionally found that Microsoft uses its strong position in software to make it harder for AWS and Google to compete for customers who want to run Microsoft software in the cloud (same release). Microsoft contested this; its formal responses are on the public record (Microsoft's reply, GOV.UK).
But the regulator didn't find everything harmful. On committed-spend discounts — the deals where you promise to spend $X over three years for a lower rate — the CMA provisionally concluded they do not currently harm competition, because rivals can profitably compete against them (CMA). A narrower finding than for egress and licensing. The regulator drew a line; not everything crossed it.
"Competition is not working well"
Concluding the investigation, the CMA's verdict was that UK cloud competition "is not working well" (CMA case page; DataCenterDynamics). In July 2025 it provisionally recommended designating both AWS and Microsoft with Strategic Market Status under the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 (CMA case page).
Then the story turned. In its final decision in March 2026, the CMA opened a Strategic Market Status investigation into Microsoft's business-software ecosystem only — declining to designate AWS after Amazon committed to changes on egress fees and interoperability (The Register; Computer Weekly).
Two giants entered the provisional stage. One left under scrutiny; the other left after promising to change. That gap is the whole story of how lock-in gets addressed.
America heard the same complaints
The pattern crossed the Atlantic. When the US Federal Trade Commission ran a 2023 Request for Information on cloud computing, it drew 102 public comments. FTC staff reported that commenters most frequently raised software-licensing practices, egress fees, and minimum-spend contracts as competition concerns — describing minimum-spend deals as a lock-in mechanism (FTC).
Same three levers. Same word: lock-in. Two regulators on two continents heard the market say the same thing.
Europe just banned the exit toll
The EU went the furthest. The EU Data Act caps cloud switching and egress charges at cost — no markup — from 11 January 2024, and prohibits them entirely from 12 January 2027, while requiring providers to enable interoperability and "functional equivalence." It became applicable on 12 September 2025 (European Commission; Latham & Watkins).
The providers moved ahead of the deadline. In January 2024 Google Cloud, and in March 2024 AWS, announced they would waive egress fees for customers leaving their platforms — with AWS expressly tying its move to "the direction set by the European Data Act" (AWS; Google Cloud).
A win — with fine print. Those waivers are exit-only and conditional: they cover a one-time migration off the platform, require approval within a fixed window, and exclude ongoing or multi-cloud transfers (InfoQ). On that basis, cloud economist Corey Quinn called AWS's move "almost entirely done for optics," arguing it addresses leaving rather than the everyday cost of moving data while you stay (InfoQ).
My read
Opinion — Michael. No one broke a law here that I can see, and the regulators are still working — provisional is not a verdict. My point is about the shape of the incentive. When it's free to come in and metered to leave, "stay" wins by default, and the best customer is the one who can't afford to go. The egress waivers tell on the model: you only need to forgive the exit toll once a regulator is watching the door. Three regulators reaching for the same lever isn't a coincidence — it's the market telling on itself. Bad systems, not bad people.
Reject my read if you like. You don't have to take any of it on faith — the findings, the pricing, and the statute are all linked above, and in the explorer.
Sourcing & corrections
CMA findings are quoted from GOV.UK and labeled provisional or final per stage; the FTC summary is what its staff reported commenters said, not an enforcement finding; the EU Data Act is quoted from the European Commission; pricing is from AWS's own page; the "optics" judgment is Corey Quinn's, attributed by name. Spot an error or something unfair? Email mpolzin@zimzap.com or message me on LinkedIn — I'll review and correct.
Next — Part 4: "Licensing as a Weapon."
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