Google accuses Microsoft of stifling cloud competition in EU complaint

Microsoft’s licensing terms restrict European customers from migrating workloads to competing platforms, Google told the European Commission.

Dive Brief:

• Google accused Microsoft of stifling cloud competition in the European Union and filed a formal complaint with the European Commission, the company said Wednesday in an announcement.
• “Microsoft’s licensing terms restrict EU customers from moving their current Microsoft workloads to competitors’ clouds — despite there being no technical barriers to doing so — or impose what Microsoft admits is a striking 400% price markup,” Google said.
• Microsoft settled a similar legal action filed by Cloud Infrastructure Service Providers in Europe in July, offering a number of concessions to the EU cloud consortium. As part of the agreement, the CISPE gave Microsoft nine months to ease software licensing restrictions and allow European cloud providers to host various Azure services.