Alphabet's Google Cloud has accused Microsoft of anti-competitive cloud computing practices and criticised imminent deals with European cloud vendors, saying these do not solve broader concerns about its licensing terms.
In Google Cloud's first public comments on Microsoft and its
European deals its Vice President Amit Zavery told Reuters the company has
raised the issue with antitrust agencies and urged European Union antitrust
regulators to take a closer look.
In response, Microsoft referred to a blogpost in May last
year where its president Brad Smith said it 'has a healthy number two position
when it comes to cloud services, with just over 20 percent market share of
global cloud services revenues'.
"We are committed to the European Cloud Community and
their success," a Microsoft spokesperson told Reuters on Thursday.
There is intense rivalry between the two US tech giants in
the multi-billion-dollar cloud computing business, where Google trails market
leader Amazon and Microsoft.
Microsoft has offered to change its cloud computing
practices in a deal with smaller rivals which in turn will suspend their
antitrust complaints, a person with direct knowledge of the matter told Reuters
this week.
The move will stave off an EU investigation.
"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," Zavery
said in an interview late on Wednesday.
"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," he added.
Zavery said individual deals struck with several smaller
European cloud vendors only benefit Microsoft.
"They're selectively kind of buying out those ones 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."
"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."
"My point to the regulators would be that they should
look at this holistically, even though one or two vendors might settle doesn't
solve the broader problem. And that's the problem we need to really resolve,
not individual vendors' problems."
Zavery dismissed the suggestion that the issue is merely a
spat between Google and Microsoft.
"The question is not about Google. I just want to make
it very clear. It's the cloud. The premise with cloud was to have an open,
flexible way to deploy your software and have customers more choices so that
they can run their software in any place they choose to in a much more easy
way," he said. © Reuters
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