Google Lodges Complaint With EU Over Microsoft’s Cloud Practices

Google has lodged an official complaint with the European Union’s antitrust regulator, accusing Microsoft of unfair business practices in the cloud services sector.

The tech giant claimed Microsoft leveraged its dominance in essential software products like Windows Server to force businesses to use its Azure cloud platform, making it increasingly costly for companies to operate on competing platforms such as Google Cloud and Amazon Web Services (AWS).

According to Google, Microsoft imposed price hikes of up to 400 per cent on its software for customers who use rival cloud services. “Microsoft’s licensing terms restrict European customers from moving their current Microsoft workloads to competitors’ clouds – despite there being no technical barriers to doing so,” Google Cloud Vice President Amit Zavery said in a blog post co-signed by Google Cloud’s Europe region president Tara Brady.

Google also claimed that Microsoft has made it difficult for customers who chose alternative platforms, by limiting security patches and creating other technical barriers. At a news conference, Zavery emphasized the need for regulatory action to eliminate these restrictions and provide businesses with the freedom to choose their cloud service providers.

“We believe this regulatory action is the only way to end Microsoft vendor lock-in and for customers to have a choice and create a level playing field for competitors,” Zavery said.

Google argued that the restrictive licensing policies were introduced by Microsoft in 2019, which effectively prevented customers from making choices based on their needs. “What Microsoft introduced in 2019 basically created this idea of not allowing choice to customers,” Zavery added.

The European Commission, the EU’s antitrust watchdog, confirmed receipt of the complaint and stated that it would evaluate the matter according to its usual procedures. The complaint was filed on Tuesday.

In response, a Microsoft spokesperson pointed out that the company had previously resolved similar complaints with European cloud providers and expressed skepticism about Google’s chances of success with the commission. “Having failed to persuade European companies, we expect Google similarly will fail to persuade the European Commission,” the spokesperson remarked.

The conflict between Google and Microsoft over antitrust issues is long-standing. In 2022, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella testified in a U.S. federal court, accusing Google of anti-competitive practices that hindered the growth of rival search engines. Microsoft also played a key role in the EU’s antitrust case against Google in the 2010s over its search engine dominance, which led to hefty fines against the search giant.

Although the two companies briefly agreed to a truce about a decade ago, tensions have resurfaced. The European Commission has already opened an investigation into Microsoft’s Teams video and messaging app, with concerns over its bundling with Microsoft Office. While Microsoft unbundled Teams in Europe and expanded this policy globally in April, the Commission indicated in June that this move did not fully address their concerns about potential violations of EU antitrust rules.

The complaint against Microsoft came as Google and other U.S. tech firms face increasing scrutiny from the European Union. Over the years, the EU has engaged in numerous regulatory battles with big tech companies over issues such as data privacy and misinformation. Google has faced fines totaling more than eight billion euros ($9 billion) for antitrust violations, though an EU court recently overturned a 1.5-billion-euro fine against Google related to its dominance in online advertising.