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Google has lodged an EU antitrust complaint against Microsoft over alleged abuse of its power to dominate cloud computing.
The search giant accused Microsoft of wielding its clout in enterprise software to steer companies toward Azure cloud services and making it difficult to leave, according to The Wall Street Journal.
A change to Microsoft’s licensing in 2019 supposedly punishes Windows Server customers that want to use a competing cloud service, Google said in the antitrust filing. That purportedly limits choices and raises prices.
Microsoft settled an industry group’s lawsuit over a comparable dispute in July of this year, but Google claimed that the promised changes didn’t go far enough to address concerns. This was the only way of eliminating Microsoft’s “vendor lock-in,” Google said.
We’ve asked Microsoft for comment and will let you know if we hear back. It told The Journal that it believed the settlement dealt with the issues, and that Google’s argument would “fail to persuade” the EU’s European Commission.
Microsoft is no stranger to antitrust complaints in the EU, having been forced to make changes to web browser choices and other elements of platforms. In June, the Commission determined that Microsoft misused its market share by tying Teams to Microsoft 365 and Office 365 from April 2019 onward.
It’s not certain that the complaint will succeed, or that it will be resolved in time to have a meaningful impact on competition in the region. If the Commission agrees to take up the complaint, it will then have to decide if it’s worth pressing charges. Microsoft can also dispute any resulting fines or other penalties, potentially pushing the final outcome years into the future.
The antitrust fight nonetheless underscores how important corporate cloud computing has become to Google and Microsoft. While conventional battles have focused on search, software monopolies, and advertising, the attention is now turning toward cloud systems that power services behind the scenes.
