Google accuses Microsoft of anti-competitive cloud practices

Google’s Cloud has reportedly accused Microsoft of anti-competitive cloud computing practices. It criticised imminent deals with several European cloud vendors and said that the deals do not solve its licensing terms concerns.

Google Cloud vice president Amit Zavery said that the company has raised the issue with antitrust agencies in the EU.

Zavery said that Microsoft is leveraging 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 we talk to a lot of our customers, they find a lot of these bundling practices, as well as the way they create pricing and licensing restrictions, make it difficult for them to choose other providers," Zavery added.

"They're selectively kind of buying out those who complain and not make those terms available to everyone. So that definitely makes it an unfair advantage to Microsoft and ties the people who complained back to Microsoft anyway," he said.

Microsoft has reportedly offered to change its cloud computing practices in a deal with a few smaller rivals which in turn will suspend their antitrust complaints.

Google and Microsoft are already fighting an artificial intelligence ‘war’ with their Bard and Copilot chatbots in Search. Both the companies have also announced AI in their consumer-centric products Google Workspace and Microsoft 365 Suite, while Google recently unveiled generative AI tools for Cloud.