Google filed an antitrust complaint with the European Commission Wednesday accusing\u00a0Microsoft\u00a0of using unfair licensing contracts to stifle competition in the multibillion-dollar cloud computing industry.<\/p>\n
At the heart of Google\u2019s complaint is the allegation that Microsoft uses unfair licensing terms to \u201clock in\u201d clients and exert control over the cloud market.<\/p>\n
Google alleges that Microsoft, through its dominant Windows Server and Microsoft Office products, can make it difficult for its massive roster of clients to use anything but its Azure cloud infrastructure offering.<\/p>\n
The internet giant said in its complaint that restrictions contained in Microsoft\u2019s cloud licensing terms makes it harder for customers to move their workloads from Microsoft\u2019s Azure cloud technology to competitors\u2019 clouds, despite there being no technical barriers to doing so.<\/p>\n
European businesses and public sector organizations have been forced to pay the firm up to 1 billion euros ($1.1 billion) a year in licensing penalties due to restrictions on customers\u2019 ability to switch from one cloud provider to another, Google said, citing a 2023 study by CISPE, a trade body for the cloud computing sector.<\/p>\n
The antitrust complaint from Google arrives after CISPE and its members in July agreed a settlement with Microsoft which would see the firm make changes to address competition concerns.<\/p>\n
Referring to the CISPE settlement, Microsoft said in a statement Wednesday that it expects the European Commission to dismiss Google\u2019s complaint.<\/p>\n
\u201cMicrosoft settled amicably similar concerns raised by European cloud providers, even after Google hoped they would keep litigating,\u201d a Microsoft spokesperson told CNBC via email. \u201cHaving failed to persuade European companies, we expect Google similarly will fail to persuade the European Commission.\u201d<\/p>\n
In a summary of the complaint, Google \u2014 which ranks third globally in the cloud computing market behind market leaders Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure, respectively \u2014 said that Microsoft \u201charms cybersecurity and undermines innovation.\u201d<\/p>\n
According to Google, if a company runs Microsoft\u2019s Office suite of productivity tools and other applications on Google Cloud Platform or other competing clouds, they are effectively required to pay a \u201ctax\u201d in the form of punchy licensing fees to Microsoft.<\/p>\n
Google said that Microsoft undermined competition in cloud and referred to findings of a U.K. Competition and Markets Authority study which determined Microsoft acquired over 60% to 70% of all new British businesses in 2021 and 2022.<\/p>\n
Google also suggested that Microsoft\u2019s cloud practices have potentially made businesses more prone to security issues.<\/p>\n
In an interview with CNBC\u2019s Arjun Kharpal Wednesday, Amit Zavery, Google Cloud\u2019s head of platform, said Google believes Microsoft is \u201c100%\u201d in violation of EU antitrust rules.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe would like the cloud market to remain and become very vibrant and open for all the providers including European vendors, vendors like us, AWS and others,\u201d<\/em> Zavery said.<\/p>\n \u201cToday the restrictions does not allow choice for customers,\u201d Zavery said. \u201cToday the restrictions does not allow choice for customers,\u201d<\/em> he said,\u00a0adding that Microsoft included restrictions once it realized the massive commercial potential of the technology.<\/p>\n \u201cSo, we would want those restrictions to be removed and allow customers to have and choose whatever cloud provider they think is best for them commercially and technically,\u201d<\/em> he added.<\/p>\n Zavery told CNBC that if Microsoft makes changes to its cloud licensing terms as a result of its complaint, Google and cloud customers more broadly would be \u201cvery happy.\u201d<\/p>\n Following the July settlement agreement with Microsoft, CISPE said the tech giant would work with its members to release an enhanced version of Azure Stack HCI, a cloud infrastructure product, to offer the same features that Microsoft customers using its Azure product currently benefit from.<\/p>\n Google, which is not a CISPE member, said it disagreed with the settlement and chose not to participate in the agreement. Amazon Web Services, which is a CISPE member, and\u00a0Alibaba\u2019s cloud unit AliCloud, also chose not to become part of the settlement.<\/p>\n For its part, Microsoft has denied that its cloud practices harm competition. In response to a cloud market study initiated by the U.K.\u2019s Competition and Markets Authority, the firm said that it \u201cfirmly believes that the cloud services market is functioning well.\u201d<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/b><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Google filed an antitrust complaint with the European Commission Wednesday accusing\u00a0Microsoft\u00a0of using unfair licensing contracts to stifle competition in the multibillion-dollar cloud computing industry. At the heart of Google\u2019s complaint is the allegation that Microsoft uses unfair licensing terms to \u201clock in\u201d clients and exert control over the cloud market. Google alleges that Microsoft, through […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27,"featured_media":49837,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[173,249],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-49836","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","category-world-news"],"aioseo_notices":[],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49836","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/27"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=49836"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49836\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":49839,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49836\/revisions\/49839"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/49837"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49836"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49836"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49836"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}