During a recent meeting with the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC), Google leveled some critical comments at Microsoft. The tech giant accused Microsoft of unfairly leveraging its dominance as an enterprise software provider to lure customers to its cloud services offerings. According to Google’s complaint, the licensing terms included in Microsoft’s Office 365 platform lock customers into separate contracts with its Azure cloud server business. This limits customer choice and makes it challenging for businesses to switch to alternative cloud service providers, including Google.
This is not the first time that these two companies have competed in the cloud computing market. Both Microsoft Azure and Amazon are market leaders, and Google has been fighting to capture a larger share of the highly lucrative cloud services market. This competition has meant that the companies have clashed on multiple occasions to win customers.
Google’s previous complaints to European regulators regarding Microsoft’s cloud computing practices led to changes in regional licensing practices. Microsoft’s revision to these practices made it more affordable for productivity software customers to use competing cloud services.
In a recent statement, the FTC shared that large parts of the economy now rely on cloud computing services for a range of services. As such, the FTC is seeking to better understand the impact of this reliance on the broader competitive dynamics in the cloud computing market as well as any potential security risks.
The FTC sent out a request for information letter aimed at better understanding the impact of reliance and the potential security risks associated with the use of cloud computing services. The letter was open for comments, and the final day for submission was June 21. The FTC’s Office of Technology, Bureau of Competition, and Bureau of Consumer Protection are expected to collaborate on this effort.
Google’s comments are the latest in a series of actions aimed at targeting Microsoft’s cloud operations. In May, the EU’s antitrust arm launched an informal probe to investigate whether Microsoft had been using data from other related cloud firms.
With the global cloud infrastructure market raking in $63.7 billion in the first quarter of 2023, according to Statista, the competition between these industry giants is expected to continue to escalate.
The conclusion of the regulatory review by the FTC will likely have a significant impact on how Google and Microsoft operate in the cloud computing market. It will also determine if there is any validity to Google’s claims of unfair competition by Microsoft.