Google Accuses Microsoft Cloud Practices are Anti-competitive
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Alphabet’s Google Cloud has said that Microsoft’s cloud computing practices hurt competition and has criticized upcoming deals with European cloud vendors, saying that they don’t solve bigger problems with Microsoft’s licensing terms.
Amit Zavery, the vice president of Google Cloud, asked EU antitrust regulators to look into the matter more closely.
Google Cloud’s first public comments about Microsoft’s EU deals show how competitive the two U.S. tech giants are in the multibillion-dollar cloud computing market, where Amazon is the market leader, and Microsoft is in second place.
“In cloud, Microsoft is definitely not very open to competition. They are using their dominance in the on-premise business, Office 365, and Windows to tie Azure and the other cloud services together and make it hard for customers to choose “Zavery told Reuters in a late Wednesday interview.
“When we talk to a lot of our customers, they tell us that a lot of these bundling practices and the way they set prices and licensing restrictions make it hard for them to choose other providers,” he said.
He said that Microsoft’s deals with smaller cloud companies in Europe were bad.
A person with direct knowledge of the situation told Reuters this week that Microsoft has offered to change how it does cloud computing as part of a deal with smaller competitors.
In exchange, the smaller companies will stop their antitrust complaints, the person said. The move will stop the EU from looking into the matter.
