Alphabet’s Google filed a criticism with the European Commission on Wednesday, alleging that Microsoft is partaking in anti-competitive practices to lock clients into its cloud platform, Azure.
Google, whose largest cloud computing rivals are Microsoft and Amazon Web Services (AWS), stated the Alphabet unit was exploiting its dominant Windows Server working system to stop competitors.
Google Cloud Vice President Amit Zavery instructed a briefing that Microsoft made clients pay a 400% mark-up to maintain working Windows Server on rival cloud computing operators. This didn’t apply in the event that they used Azure. Users of rival cloud methods would additionally get later and extra restricted safety updates, Zavery stated.
Google pointed to a 2023 examine by cloud companies group CISPE, which discovered that European companies and public sector our bodies have been paying as much as 1 billion euros ($1.12 billion) per 12 months on Microsoft licensing penalties.
Microsoft in July clinched a 20 million euro deal to settle an antitrust criticism about its cloud computing licensing practices with CISPE, averting an EU investigation. However, the settlement didn’t embody Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud Platform and AliCloud, prompting criticism from the primary two firms.
Microsoft stated it had settled amicably related issues raised by European cloud suppliers, including that Google had hoped they might maintain litigating.
“Having failed to persuade European companies, we expect Google similarly will fail to persuade the European Commission,” a Microsoft spokesperson stated in an announcement.
Google stated Microsoft had locked clients into utilizing the collaboration software Teams even after they most popular alternate options and was utilizing the identical playbook for Azure.
“The time to act is now,” Zavery stated. “The cloud market will get more and more restrictive if things don’t happen now.”
Google stated that solely regulatory motion would finish Microsoft’s “vendor lock” and degree the taking part in area for opponents.
“We are asking the European Commission to act now. We’re asking them to really look at this issue, help customers decide and keep the choices going for them,” Zavery stated.
Google stated Microsoft’s Windows Server and numerous Microsoft merchandise had a market share of over 70% in European companies.
For years, Microsoft allowed its merchandise to work on any {hardware}, equivalent to laptops, however positioned restrictions in 2019 because it entered the cloud business.
The cloud computing business is rising at round 20% per 12 months within the EU, with loads of potential. A McKinsey examine in April confirmed that two-thirds of EU firms had lower than half of their workloads on the cloud.
Source: www.dailysabah.com