Google Says Microsoft Cloud Practices Are Anti-Competitive (yahoo.com) 44
Alphabet's Google Cloud has accused Microsoft of anti-competitive cloud computing practices and criticised imminent deals with several European cloud vendors, saying these do not solve broader concerns about its licensing terms. From a report: In Google Cloud's first public comments on Microsoft and its European deals its Vice President Amit Zavery told Reuters the company has raised the issue with antitrust agencies and urged European Union antitrust regulators to take a closer look.
In response, Microsoft referred to a blogpost in May last year where its president Brad Smith said it 'has a healthy number two position when it comes to cloud services, with just over 20 percent market share of global cloud services revenues'. "We are committed to the European Cloud Community and their success," a Microsoft spokesperson told Reuters on Thursday. There is intense rivalry between the two U.S. tech giants in the fast-growing, multi-billion-dollar cloud computing business, where Google trails market leader Amazon and Microsoft.
In response, Microsoft referred to a blogpost in May last year where its president Brad Smith said it 'has a healthy number two position when it comes to cloud services, with just over 20 percent market share of global cloud services revenues'. "We are committed to the European Cloud Community and their success," a Microsoft spokesperson told Reuters on Thursday. There is intense rivalry between the two U.S. tech giants in the fast-growing, multi-billion-dollar cloud computing business, where Google trails market leader Amazon and Microsoft.
The hypocrisy steams out (Score:4, Funny)
Pot: "Stop monopolizing black kettles!"
Re: (Score:2)
Honesty is possible for large companies, but it takes effort and commitment
Is this new? (Score:3)
In the last few years, we've seen a lot of companies going political routes (courts, regulators, etc.) to fight their rivals. A few recent examples are Amazon with the Jedi contract, Sony with the Microsoft/Activision deal, and now Google.
Is this new? I don't remember seeing this behavior much 10-20 years ago, but it seems to happen all the time now.
Re: (Score:2)
This happens all the time when new stuff comes around. Around 2009-2010, every company that had anything to do with cellphones was fighting patent litigation, either trying to press patent claims or show prior art and defend against other company claims. Now, companies will be duking it out in the court for AI patents for the next few years.
This isn't even new to our generation. The entire concept of refrigeration was locked behind a patent by an ice company for the patent's lifespan.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Cows do too but they don't brag about it.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
... Says the person using the results of capitalism to make his/her opinions visible to the whole world...
Re: (Score:3)
A wise man uses all his avenues to his advantage.
Re: Evil Is As Evil Does. (Score:2)
That wasn't real capitalism. Real capitalism has never been done.
Re: (Score:3)
Then you have a lot of emails you need to send out.
Re: (Score:3)
Nope. The barter system.
Re: (Score:1)
doesn't scale. How many chickens is a nintendo worth? How long will you host my website if I paint your fence?
capitalism is just the barter system with a standard store of value
Re: (Score:2)
Scales fine. Maybe gives a person something to think about when they are out making friends.
Re: (Score:1)
Ok, suppose i'm running a factory, building cars. What, under "the barter system" do i get in return for building the cars? a random assortment of favors and goods from all of my customers? sounds pretty unweildy, maybe those customers could hand me IOUs for some amount of value -- oh wait, i just accidentally invented currency
Re: (Score:2)
What should we do about our socialized roads?
Re: (Score:1)
Capitalism and Libertarianism aren't the same thing. Were multiple companies allowed to bid on the construction and maintenance of those roads? sounds like capitalism to me...
Re: (Score:2)
Are you trolling or does government owning the means of production (such as roads) really sound like capitalism to you?
Re: (Score:1)
Roads aren't means of production, they're utilities. I'm not some kind of anarchist, and i understand the need for some collective assets -- however, market competition is largely a positive force.
Also, i wouldn't exactly call the various state DOTs efficient organizations. For every guy digging a hole, there are 10 guys standing around watching; there's very little incentive to cut this cost, because the government will just print money or raise taxes when they run out.
It's not really uncompetitive... (Score:1)
Trying to do a bunch of RHEL servers...not the best place to go.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: It's not really uncompetitive... (Score:1)
No azure goes well beyond windows. The reason Google can't get any customers is because as soon as they release an API, they'll discontinue it and break all of your shit.
Microsoft, for all of its faults, doesn't do that. Hell, if you wrote a program for Windows 3.0 in 1990 that didn't use undocumented APIs or have any bugs that didn't happen to break anything on systems at the time, there's a decent chance it will still work for modern windows.
Re: (Score:3)
It "can" do things beyond windows...but not as well as other choices.
Try setting up Oracle golden gate on RHEL in different "failure zones"....and see how readily that is to not only set up, but to actually keep running.
Hell, awhile back the whole thing in one center went fully down, like someone at MS Azure at that data center had tripped over a plug and unplugged EVERYTHING.
Shit happens there that you would not expect.
The windows servers, those seemed to work pretty
Re: (Score:1)
It "can" do things beyond windows...but not as well as other choices.
I've written my fair share of software that interacts directly with the API, and I can't say I've once encountered a situation where using Windows made anything easier. I suppose there's the AAD integration in the WinRT API, but that isn't really anything special, and everything it does is generally easier to do with the graph API directly anyways, especially if you aren't using C++.
Try setting up Oracle golden gate on RHEL in different "failure zones"....and see how readily that is to not only set up, but to actually keep running.
I'd wager that has more to do with Oracle, who offers services that directly compete with Azure. In fact, I've yet to encounte
Re: (Score:2)
Re: It's not really uncompetitive... (Score:2)
Of course they are (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:1)
Google just can't compete (Score:3)
I run a software vendor that sells software on all the major cloud providers. Google requires a legal review of your "open source disclosure" in order to even do security updates, which typically takes several days. Remember that log4j issue? Yep, you couldn't fix the issue until you had a legal review of your open source packages. No other cloud provider requires anything like this. The company is straight up ruled by lawyers and won't do anything without review.
AWS meanwhile (Score:2)
Let's layoff some more engineers to drive profits up!
Whining is not a good look (Score:1)
What? (Score:3)
You're one of the biggest anti-competitive monopolies out there, and even in some of the same spaces.
Also, if you're going to go after MS for unfair cloud computing practices you're going to have to go through AWS first. They're a MUCH bigger fish in that pond.
Should the large companies be constrained ... (Score:3)
a limit as to how many fields they can become big in? If they want to grow large in a new field they will have to divest from one other one. This will make it harder for the separate business to support each other to the detriment of the competition.
A simple idea but working out rules to make this work effectively will be hard and the large corporations will throw money at lobbyists to bribe politicians to stop this happening.
Google cloud is inferior... (Score:1)
Google has a point (Score:1)
I feel like the odd man out (reading these comments)—and the article doesn't explicitly state what is anti-competitive—but if you're familiar with how Windows Server licensing goes, you might agree. Microsoft's Windows Server licensing (or maybe the whole suite of their software taken together) is as complex as Oracle's and nearly as draconian.
Just as one example, Windows Server's generally licensed based on the physical machine that hosts any virtualized Windows workloads (iirc, they *recently
Re: (Score:2)
I think you've missed the point. :)
Nobody's disputing that MS offered discounted license for Windows instances running on Azure, in a blatant violation of antitrust laws almost everywhere in the western world (including the EU, which is where this story started) and tried to hide it behind NDAs, making those discounts dependent on not revealing the terms, and so on.
The reason commenters are mocking Google is because Google does far worse on a daily basis, and very publicly did so to MS themselves just a cou