Google claims Microsoft still anti-competitive in European Cloud

Google isn’t happy with the recent changes Microsoft made for European cloud vendors. A recent Reuters report takes a look at Google’s stance and includes comments from Google Cloud President, Amit Zavery.

The news comes just days after a Reuters report that Microsoft had offered to change some of its cloud practices for several small European Vendors.  Google believes Microsoft is cherry-picking vendors for its deals in an effort to maintain market dominance, not make genuine changes.  In an interview, late Wednesday Zavery further explained Google’s stance.

Microsoft definitely has a very anti-competitive posture in cloud. They are leveraging a lot of their dominance in the on-premise business as well as Office 365 and Windows to tie Azure and the rest of cloud services and make it hard for customers to have a choice.

When speaking with Reuters Microsoft give reference to a blog post in May of 2022, and a spokesperson shared a statement.

We are committed to the European Cloud Community and their success.

Microsoft introduced changes in October 2022, in response to feedback from European cloud providers.  Zavery still believes Microsoft is offering targeted deals or even buying out smaller vendors and not making deals available to everyone.

Whatever they’re offering, there should be terms across for everybody, not just for one or two they’ve chosen and pick, and that shows you that they have so much market power they can kind of go and do those things individually.

The European Commission has declined to comment.  Microsoft still faces another EU antitrust complaint for CISPE, whose members include Amazon. The trade group has rejected Microsoft’s changes.

Via Windows Central