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The search giant, which has been embroiled in several of its own antitrust complaints, claims Microsoft engages in unfair cloud computing practices.
Google has filed a complaint with the European Commission about Microsoft and its licensing practices, which the search giant says are “anticompetitive”.
It claims that Microsoft leverages Windows Server dominance to drive customers to Azure and said it exploits customers’ reliance on products like Windows Server by “imposing steep penalties on using on-premise software with Azure rivals”.
“Microsoft makes it cost-prohibitive to use Windows Server software and other products on key rival clouds. A customer who wants to migrate on-premise Windows Server licences to Azure can do so for essentially nothing. But a customer who wants to move on-premise Windows Server licences to an Azure competitor must pay a 400pc mark-up to buy entirely new Windows Server licences,” the complaint stated.
“Even for customers who opt to pay the 400pc mark-up, Microsoft refuses to provide critical upgrades and security updates for more than three years to Windows Server workloads run on competitors’ cloud platforms. In contrast, Azure customers face no such restrictions.”
In a statement sent to SiliconRepublic.com, a Microsoft spokesperson said: “Microsoft settled amicably similar concerns raised by European cloud providers, even after Google hoped they would keep litigating. Having failed to persuade European companies, we expect Google similarly will fail to persuade the European Commission.”
This is not the first time Microsoft has been in hot water for suspected antitrust practices. Earlier this year, the European Commission accused Microsoft of breaching antitrust rules for bundling Teams with Office 365 and Microsoft 365 productivity apps.
At the time, the Commission said Microsoft may have granted Teams a “distribution advantage” by not giving customers the choice whether to acquire access to Teams when they subscribe to their SaaS productivity applications.
It also faced a complaint in 2022 specifically relating to its cloud licensing practices, which Google is currently calling out. The 2022 complaint came from Cloud Infrastructure Service Providers in Europe (CISPE), a cloud services organisation that counts Amazon among its members.
However, this complaint was settled between CISPE and Microsoft in a $22m deal earlier this year, avoiding further investigation.
Meanwhile, Google is no stranger to receiving antitrust complaints of its own. Earlier this month, the company lost its fight against a €2.4bn fine, bringing a seven-year antitrust battle to an end.
In a more recent case, the UK Competition and Markets Authority provisionally found that Google’s actions as a dominant player in adtech is harming advertisers and publishers and may have broken competition law.
And last month, a major US ruling declared Google to be a search monopoly, which could see the tech behemoth split up.
Updated, 5.45pm, 25 September 2024: This article was updated to include a statement from Microsoft.
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