Google accuses Microsoft of anticompetitive practices in Azure cloud

Google, which has spent years defending itself towards claims of monopolistic habits throughout the U.S. and Europe, goes public with its personal grievance of anti-competitive practices by longtime rival Microsoft.

In a letter to the Federal Commerce Fee on Wednesday, Google alleged that Microsoft makes use of unfair licensing phrases to “lock in shoppers” to exert management over the cloud-computing market.

The letter was despatched in response to a broad FTC request for touch upon probably anti-competitive acts within the cloud trade. A spokesperson for the FTC declined to remark additional.

Google singled out Microsoft within the grievance, arguing that via its dominant Home windows Server and Microsoft Workplaces merchandise, the corporate could make it troublesome for its large roster of shoppers to make use of something however its Azure cloud infrastructure providing. Google described Microsoft’s licensing restrictions as a “complicated net” that forestalls companies from diversifying their enterprise software program distributors.

Google additionally mentioned that such management represents a big nationwide safety and cybersecurity threat. It highlighted successive cyberattacks involving Microsoft merchandise, together with the SolarWinds breach. Microsoft and Google each have energetic cybersecurity practices that reply to and analysis cyber threats.

Google is not any stranger to antitrust issues. In January, the Justice Division filed its second antitrust lawsuit towards Google in simply over two years, concentrating on its promoting enterprise.

The division’s earlier lawsuit, filed in October 2020 beneath the Trump administration, accused Google of utilizing monopoly energy to chop off competitors for web search via exclusionary agreements. That case is anticipated to go to trial in September.

Google additionally faces three different antitrust lawsuits from giant teams of state attorneys normal, together with one centered on its promoting enterprise led by Texas Legal professional Normal Ken Paxton.

In its FTC letter, Microsoft additionally alleged that Oracle’s practices are dangerous to prospects.

“With overly complicated agreements that search to lock in shoppers to their ecosystems,” Google mentioned, firms like Microsoft and Oracle “aren’t solely forcing prospects towards a monolithic cloud mannequin but in addition limiting alternative, rising prices for patrons, and disrupting rising and thriving digital ecosystems within the U.S. and all over the world.”

Within the Nineties, Microsoft was concerned in one of the crucial infamous antitrust circumstances in U.S. historical past. The corporate was accused of utilizing its dominance in desktop software program to push customers to its web browser, killing off competitors from upstarts like Netscape. The federal government received the case, finally forcing Microsoft to permit PC makers to make use of different firm’s browsers.

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