Dive Brief:
- Google filed a formal complaint with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission Tuesday, accusing Microsoft of anticompetitive cloud practices, according to The Information, which reportedly reviewed the document.
- The complaint alleges Microsoft unfairly leveraged its dominant position in enterprise software to push customers toward Azure and other Microsoft cloud services, the report said. Microsoft and Google’s parent company Alphabet did not respond to requests for comment.
- In March, the FTC issued a request for information on cloud service provider business practices, signaling the agency’s concerns over growing reliance on cloud infrastructure and services, specifically in the healthcare, finance, transportation, e-commerce and defense sectors.
Dive Insight:
Google is a junior member of the hyperscaler club. The tech giant’s 10% share of the $63 billion global cloud market trails that of Microsoft and AWS, at 23% and 32% respectively, according to Synergy Research Group’s April report on cloud spending during the first three months of the year.
The FTC filing echoes public statements critical of Microsoft’s business practices in the European Union made by Amit Zavery, Google Cloud VP and GM of business platforms and cloud operations, to Reuters in March.
The Cloud Infrastructure Services Providers in Europe, an alliance of EU cloud companies that includes AWS, issued a complaint against Microsoft in November. CISPE cited Microsoft’s alleged use of “unjustified and discriminatory bundling, tying, self-preferencing pricing and technical and economic lock-in … to restrict the choice of European companies as they move to the cloud.”
Microsoft responded to the CISPE challenge by promising increased support for European cloud providers and greater licensing flexibility to EU customers, as Brad Smith, president and vice chair of Microsoft, detailed in a May 18 blog post. On May 15, Bloomberg reported Microsoft Azure was the target of an informal antitrust investigation by the EU.
While details of the FTC complaint have not been made public, Google has alleged that Microsoft uses Office 365 licensing provisions to lock customers into Azure contracts, The Information report said.
