Honestly speaking, I’m not surprised about this. Actually, every cloud service provider has locked in their customers with a service or terms that make it difficult to switch. Therefore, this is not unique to Microsoft. However, what’s concerning to me is, if demand on data centers generated by OpenAI was all controlled by one entity (Microsoft). This means that Microsoft made it harder for other service providers to offer more efficient or more environmentally friendly data center solutions since AI does require data centers.
FTC’s main concern is that Microsoft’s deal with OpenAI in 2019 has barred other workload providers from competing with Azure potentially negatively impacting fair competition, innovation and sustainability.