Microsoft Relaxes Cloud Terms To Avoid Full EU Antitrust Probe (ft.com) 6
Microsoft is relaxing business terms for its cloud computing service in an attempt to appease complaints from rivals and avoid a full antitrust probe in Brussels. Financial Times: The move follows concerns from rival cloud providers that Microsoft is using anti-competitive practices to draw customers to its Azure cloud computing platform and away from competitors. On Wednesday, Microsoft president Brad Smith said the tech giant was taking steps that were "very broad but not exhaustive" as he sought to address concerns from regulators and competitors. Smith said the changes being introduced were "grounded in feedback" he had received from multiple cloud providers across Europe.
In a blog post, he wrote: "Some of the most compelling feedback for me personally came from a CEO who said that he felt that he 'was a victim of friendly fire in Microsoft's competition with Amazon.' It was hard to hear this -- but he was right." [...] Under the new terms, customers will not be forced to buy an additional licence if they have already purchased Microsoft's cloud services. These new rules only apply if the services are moved to a European cloud provider and not to US rivals such as AWS and Google's cloud services. Smith said that in its fight against AWS, which dominates the cloud market, Microsoft had overlooked the effects some of its business terms were having on its cloud provider clients.
In a blog post, he wrote: "Some of the most compelling feedback for me personally came from a CEO who said that he felt that he 'was a victim of friendly fire in Microsoft's competition with Amazon.' It was hard to hear this -- but he was right." [...] Under the new terms, customers will not be forced to buy an additional licence if they have already purchased Microsoft's cloud services. These new rules only apply if the services are moved to a European cloud provider and not to US rivals such as AWS and Google's cloud services. Smith said that in its fight against AWS, which dominates the cloud market, Microsoft had overlooked the effects some of its business terms were having on its cloud provider clients.
So... Success story? (Score:2)
Looks like a success to me.
Government regulation to address problems, company adjusts policy to follow regulations. News at 11.
Paywall (Score:5, Informative)
In case anyone wants to, you know, RTFA, here's a non paywall version [archive.ph].
Re: (Score:2)
In case anyone wants to, you know, RTFA,
It contains the relevant point about the story
At the heart of rivals’ concerns was a change to Microsoft’s licensing terms made in October 2019. The change affected the way the company charges for products such as Office when they are running in the data centres of Amazon Web Services, Google and Alibaba, so-called hyperscale cloud services that compete with Azure.
Not a real change (Score:5, Informative)
The article taps around the issues, while still making it clear that this change is at best superficial.
In October 2019 Microsoft made a change to the licence for their consumer products which is very hard to interpret as anything but blatantly anti competitive. Any software such as Microsoft Office or Microsoft Windows (but not Microsoft Windows Server, which is why it and only it is available on AWS) purchased after that date cannot be run on a hosted cloud service. Azure then has special licences not available to anyone else to allow the software to run there.
This is a completely blatant use of their dominant market position in products such as Microsoft Office to push customers to Azure.
The statement from Brad Smith "Microsoft had overlooked the effects some of its business terms were having on its cloud provider clients." Is total bullshit, this was a significant and deliberate change designed to achieve exactly what it achieves. The only gray area is around what gets caught up in the definition of a hosted cloud service.
The proposed change is to remove the terms added in 2019. But only for European based businesses.
This is a transparent attempt to dodge the EU antitrust investigation and should be a huge red flag for every other antitrust group around the world.
Lying Coniving Double Crossing (Score:2)
he was right." [...] Under the new terms, customers will not be forced to buy an additional licence if they have already purchased Microsoft's cloud services.
Hooray! They see their "mistake" and have now corrected their "error".
Microsoft had overlooked the effects some of its business terms were having on its cloud provider clients.
Of course. It could have happened to anyone. It's easy to accidentally overlook the effect that this had.
These new rules only apply if the services are moved to a European cloud provider and not to US rivals such as AWS and Google's cloud services.
Not a mistake in U.S. markets? Fuck American businesses? Overlooked in EU, but not overlooked anywhere else?
The duplicity is a bit too patently obvious to lie your way out of this one.
Here is the market share (Score:1)
As per Q4 2021 (revenue)
AWS - 33%
Azure - 21%
Google - 10%
AWS is clearly market leader, but I would not call it dominant. (also, keep in mind that it's the most expensive of three, so in terms of customers, the share is lower than 33%)