Amazon faces widening US antitrust scrutiny, cloud business also under lens

The outreach by the FTC signals that the agency is taking a broader look at the company to determine whether it could be violating antitrust laws and harming competition

US antitrust enforcers have broadened their scrutiny of Amazon.com Inc. beyond its retail operations to include its massive cloud-computing business, according to people familiar with the matter.

Investigators at the US Federal Trade Commission have been asking software companies recently about practices around Amazon’s cloud unit, known as Amazon Web Services, said the people, who declined to be named because they weren’t authorized to speak publicly.

The outreach by the FTC signals that the agency, which is already looking at Amazon’s conduct in its vast online retail business, is taking a broader look at the company to determine whether it could be