UK competition watchdog drops Microsoft-OpenAI probe

Critics though say the decision is linked to the changed political environment the CMA is now operating in. The government has instructed the country's regulators to suggest ways of stimulating economic growth. In January, the government removed the then chair of the CMA, Marcus Bokkerink, because it was unhappy with his response to that call. He was replaced on an interim basis by Doug Gurr, former boss of Amazon UK. "The CMA has sat on this decision for over a year, yet within just a few weeks of a former Amazon boss being installed as chair, it has decided everything was absolutely fine all along, nothing to see here," said Foxglove co-executive director Rosa Curling. "This is a bad sign that Big Tech has successfully convinced the prime minister to defang our competition regulator and let Big Tech gobble up the current generation of cutting-edge tech – just like they did the last one," she told the BBC.