Amazon Web Services, the cloud computing giant, announced that it will allow its customers to transfer data from its ecosystem without paying an upfront fee.
This news comes two months after Google announced a similar plan to stop charging fees to cloud customers who want to move data to other cloud providers or on-premises data centers.
The moves follow provisions of a European Union data law that came into effect in January, which aims to boost competition by allowing cloud customers to easily switch providers to another cloud or move all data to on-premises infrastructure.
Amazon Web Services allows customers to transfer up to 100GB of data from its servers for free each month, though that amount may not be enough for large companies that want to move all of their data storage to another provider.
It should be noted that European data laws are intended to increase competition in Europe, although Amazon Web Services' decision, like Google's announcement earlier this year, applies to its global operations.
Amazon Web Services encourages businesses that want to transfer data to contact Amazon Web Services to take the steps to transfer the data.
With Google and Amazon Web Services announcing these plans, Microsoft is expected to follow in the footsteps of its competitors.
Regulators around the world are investigating companies' use of these fees. Critics say it stifles competition.
The UK media regulator has asked UK antitrust regulators to investigate Amazon, Google and Microsoft's dominance of the UK cloud market.
It's unclear what this announcement means for the ongoing investigation into cloud practices, as a central aspect of the investigation is severance pay.
The UK antitrust watchdog has identified another issue with interoperability between competing cloud services, as eliminating fees does not eliminate technical issues related to switching.