Google accuses Microsoft of anti-competition practice in EU cloud market

Tech giants have been pointing fingers at one another for months when it comes to the cloud computing industry, with Google, Microsoft, and Amazon (AWS), the three dominant players in the market, taking criticism from each other.

Now, Google has filed a complaint with the European Commission accusing Microsoft of using licensing terms to restrict European customers from switching cloud providers, despite there being no technical barriers to do so, or impose a 400% price markup.

It claims this has cost European businesses at least $1 billion a year, as well as stifling competition and innovation by preventing companies from using multiple cloud platforms.

‘Lock-in’ tactics

Microsoft’s terms force users to ‘lock-in’ to its service, which also weakens security, Google insists, since a lack of diversity in providers means cyber attacks are more frequent. The complaint points to the recent outage as an example of vulnerability when one firm ...