Google says Microsoft’s cloud practices anti-competitive, slams deals with rivals

Google Cloud Vice President Amit Zavery urged EU antitrust regulators to take a closer look at the issue.

Google Cloud’s first public comments on Microsoft and its EU deals underscores the rivalry between the two U.S. tech giants in the multi-billion-dollar cloud computing business where Google trails market leader Amazon and second-ranked Microsoft.

“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 told Reuters 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 said.

He criticised Microsoft’s deals with smaller European cloud vendors.

Discover the stories of your interest

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.