The UK competition watchdog has decided to delay its deadline for its cloud market report, citing the need for a more thorough probe into the sector.

The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has extended its own deadline by four months, from April 2025 to August 2025.

In their extension announcement, the CMA cited the “nature an complexity of the issues” that were raised in the initial inquiry, including the various theories of harm investigated.

Particularly, the CMA said the licensing practices theory of harm was mentioned, “which was not examined in depth in Ofcom’s market study.”

According to the CMA, some of the papers they required from main party hearings were received after the deadline for submission of evidence, which could contribute to the need for a an extension.

The news follows Google firing shots a Microsoft, one of its main cloud rivals, for impeding customer choice in the UK cloud market.

There are three main contenders in the UK market, and they are all part of some of the biggest tech companies in the world.

Amazon Web Services (AWS) makes up 40 to 50% of the UK cloud market share, as of 2022, followed by Microsoft Azure at 30 to 40%. Google Cloud trailed this, with only around 5 to 10% of UK cloud market share.

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Google’s claims, which were echoed by Amazon, said that Microsoft’s software licencing practices were anti-competitive and restrictive.

The allegations were voiced as part of the CMA’s call for evidence in its probe of the cloud market.

Both AWS and Microsoft contested much of the CMA’s concerns in the call for evidence, saying that the market is “highly dynamic and rapidly evolving,” even though the pair make up over two thirds of the UK cloud market.

The companies did band together against several concerns the UK watchdog raised – this included minimum spend charges, exit charges, and licence fees.

While the cloud market faces scrutiny, the importance of cloud infrastructure is becoming more apparent as the UK government considers data centres critical infrastructure, and the UK has announced a £8 billion investment from AWS to build new data centres.