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Cloud Microsoft Businesses Google

Google Steps Up Microsoft Criticism, Warns of Rival's Monopoly in Cloud (reuters.com) 110

Alphabet's Google Cloud on Monday ramped up its criticism of Microsoft's cloud computing practices, saying its rival is seeking a monopoly that would harm the development of emerging technologies such as generative AI. From a report: "We worry about Microsoft wanting to flex their decade-long practices where they had a lot of monopoly on the on-premise software before and now they are trying to push that into cloud now," Google Cloud Vice President Amit Zavery said in an interview. "So they are creating this whole walled garden, which is completely controlled and owned by Microsoft, and customers who want to do any of this stuff, you have to go to Microsoft only," he said.

"If Microsoft cloud doesn't remain open, we will have issues and long-term problems, even in next generation technologies like AI as well, because Microsoft is forcing customers to go to Azure in many ways," Zavery said, referring to Microsoft's cloud computing platform. He urged antitrust regulators to act. "I think regulators need to provide some kind of guidance as well as maybe regulations which prevent the way Microsoft is building the Azure cloud business, not allow your on-premise monopoly to bring it into the cloud monopoly," Zavery said.

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Google Steps Up Microsoft Criticism, Warns of Rival's Monopoly in Cloud

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  • by derplord ( 7203610 ) on Tuesday February 27, 2024 @12:40AM (#64271568)

    > we will have issues and long-term problems, even in next generation technologies like AI as well

    Almost spilled my coffee reading this, considering Google just themselves released an AI that was more openly racist than anything people at Stormfront could come up with.

    Google is one of those companies that needs to be split.

    • Garbage in, garbage out.

    • I don't see what splitting Google will accomplish at this point. Their core business -- search -- has gone to total shit and right now is just living on its past momentum, they've completely lost the ability to build a functional product, they're no longer the enviable employer they once were (you know your corporate culture is fubar when you pay based on where the employee lives rather than the value the employee delivers, and identity politics is takes higher priority over simply getting the job done.)

      At

    • > Google is one of those companies that needs to be split.

      Probably, but there's no doubt in my mind that MS is absolutely building a "cloud" that locks people in - and they're leveraging people who already have a lot of MS to build a customer base. Whether or not that's 'anti trust' in the flimsy US sense, or more likely in the tougher European sense, I couldn't say - but on-prem windows users don't have a completely level playing field on which to base their decisions when choosing a cloud provider.

      (one

    • You can also search the term "shoplifter" and learn that only white people are shoplifters.

  • But MS isn't the only one to try that!
  • by Anonymous Coward

    GCP has the monopoly on the spam and the malvertising.

  • by dmitrygr ( 736758 ) <dmitrygr@gmail.com> on Tuesday February 27, 2024 @01:11AM (#64271584) Homepage
    Bitching about a strong competitor is a loser move. Outcompeting them is a winner move. Google, you used to be so much better. Where is the company of chrome and of gmail?
    • by Bert64 ( 520050 )

      Azure is a pretty lousy cloud service, forgetting Google they're behind AWS in many ways - and yet they still have a quite sizeable market share. A lot of that is down to leveraging lock-in from other products.
      Orgs that are not already locked in to other MS products/services tend to go for AWS, with a much smaller percentage choosing GCP, Oracle etc.

    • They sold out to Wall Street for mountains of cash and turned the company over to MBAs, like the rest of Wall Street's zombified corpses of corporations.

  • by OpenSourced ( 323149 ) on Tuesday February 27, 2024 @01:40AM (#64271624) Journal

    Many companies I have worked with are completely Microsoft sold, even if they don't use the cloud. Starting with Windows-only, even for servers, then Office, database is of course Sql Server, and now web services like SharePoint too. They would even use Windows Phone if it existed anymore. They don't even want to look to options outside MS, it's like MS is a helping hand, guiding them in the dark.

    Of course if they migrate anything to the cloud they are not even looking at alternatives to Microsoft. They are in any case already completely locked-in, so that's not a concern for them. Bottom line, if you want to compete with Microsoft, you have to offer a similar range of software, not just in the cloud, but outside it. Good luck with that.

    • and these companies are rotting corpses i know that because sharepoint is the most brittle and unusable system i ever had to fight the stench of
      • People actually seriously try to use sharepoint? Really?

        The only place I've ever seen it tried they put HR docs like the holiday schedule on it with plans to do everything.
        Then HR got slammed with holiday schedule questions and it was turned off.

        • Well, if you develop a Power App for Android, for example, it kind of nudges you, by making your path much easier, towards saving the data in SharePoint. I'm sure that if you are into the MS ecosystem, many more examples will appear. Of course Sharepoint is trash, but, if you want to follow the road of least resistance...

      • Even Microsoft shops barely touch Sharepoint these days.

    • At many companies the IT department has a lot of power. And many IT managers likes Microsoft - "You don't get fired for buying IBM", now Microsoft. I talked to the head of IT of one of my former workplaces some months ago: They finally moved a little bit to cloud but it was obvious that cloud was Azure, nothing else was even considered. A typical company with MS centric IT, but a lot of Linux in development department.
    • Many companies I have worked with are completely Microsoft sold, even if they don't use the cloud. Starting with Windows-only, even for servers, then Office, database is of course Sql Server, and now web services like SharePoint too. They would even use Windows Phone if it existed anymore. They don't even want to look to options outside MS, it's like MS is a helping hand, guiding them in the dark.

      Of course if they migrate anything to the cloud they are not even looking at alternatives to Microsoft. They are in any case already completely locked-in, so that's not a concern for them. Bottom line, if you want to compete with Microsoft, you have to offer a similar range of software, not just in the cloud, but outside it. Good luck with that.

      Sure, but to a certain degree that's sensible. Ease-of-integration is a feature.

      What this complaint is about is bogus. Microsoft's cloud environment is open. They have a robust API for a massive pile of functionality, and anyone who wants to can interact with it. You don't need to use Microsoft's tools for everything... you just need to work if you want to use something else. Want to integrate Drop Box with Sharepoint? Fine. Learn some code. Do it. Don't expect Microsoft to do it for you though..

    • All the companies I've worked for as a developer the last several years have switched entirely to Linux on app servers, at least. Even Microsoft uses it for servers mostly.

      But business mainly use Microsoft mainly because they want their OS and applications software to work together really well. And you sort of get that with Microsoft products, since they also make the OS.

    • There's a couple of important reasons for this: support, and familiarity. Sure, Linux may be "cheaper" in that it's open source. But it costs more to maintain Linux, and to train employees on Linux. Most employees already know how to get around on Windows, but not so much Linux. Also Microsoft gives IT departments all kinds of settings they can enforce via Group Policy. IT departments eat that stuff up.

    • Many companies I have worked with are completely Microsoft sold, even if they don't use the cloud. Starting with Windows-only, even for servers, then Office, database is of course Sql Server, and now web services like SharePoint too. They would even use Windows Phone if it existed anymore. They don't even want to look to options outside MS, it's like MS is a helping hand, guiding them in the dark.

      Of course if they migrate anything to the cloud they are not even looking at alternatives to Microsoft. They are in any case already completely locked-in, so that's not a concern for them. Bottom line, if you want to compete with Microsoft, you have to offer a similar range of software, not just in the cloud, but outside it. Good luck with that.

      While I'm no fan of vendor hosted services I would take SQL Server on RDS over Azure any day. With RDS you don't get a bastardized "cloud" version with stupid quirks (e.g. getdate() is UTC) and annoying constraints on system access.

      What is the point of moving your apps to Azure if they require Azure specific modification to work right? I always tell people who want to run their shit on other peoples computers to avoid Azure.

  • Then everyone uses it and now the government has to break you up for monopolistic practices? So you listen to the boss for 20 years trying to make the perfect product only to get canned by the government. What the fuck? When are we going to take out the shitty government?

    • Whining fascists sound a lot like mosquitoes ...
    • It is perfectly legal to be a monopoly in a vertical.

      It is not legal to use that monopoly to strong arm your customers and competitors in a different vertical.

      That's 99% of what you need to know about anti-trust law.

    • Making the best thing isn't the problem, using your best thing to force other people into your shitty thing - THAT's the problem. We have anti-trust laws to stop the 800lb gorilla strong arming their way into a competitor's business then shutting them out with forced bundling and integration. We accept natural monopolies where the superior product won so hard that the competitors lost on merit, we don't accept them when the shittier option became the defacto standard because they deliberately chose not to s

  • Crying that their AI isnt being used as much, crying that people prefer MS cloud services, crying they dont have the monopoly over cloud, AI, OS, etc etc. Funny how they don't like other companies having a monopoly over a certain areas.
    • If G Docs didn't suck so much more people might use it.

      The first version of O365 years ago was light years better than GD today.

      My favorite GD experience was regularly having to copy spreadsheets locally, work on them in excel then paste them back because GD sheets were such a fucking disaster. It was like a college sophomore project vs a professional application.

  • Mr. Pot, meet Mr. Kettle.
  • With more than 80% of internet search market share, something that dominates human behavior, Google has excessive market power. Microsoft has less than a quarter of the cloud computing market and Google should have a gigantic lead in AI.

    Let the market decide and stop asking corrupt government officials taking campaign contributions to tilt the scale for your monopoly.
  • It's kind of gratifying to see Google complaining.

  • Everyone here seems to be mocking this at the pot calling the kettle black, and while it's true that there are serious issues in the management, monopolistic practices, and social influences of both corps; however we should be focused on tangible solutions. I propose a reality TV series wherein the highest ranking member of any company with more than 10 employees engaged in a dispute fight to the death, once per minute for an hour a day, at the end of the minute if they both live they're executed on the sp
    • Everyone here seems to be mocking this at the pot calling the kettle black, and while it's true that there are serious issues in the management, monopolistic practices, and social influences of both corps; however we should be focused on tangible solutions. I propose a reality TV series wherein the highest ranking member of any company with more than 10 employees engaged in a dispute fight to the death, once per minute for an hour a day, at the end of the minute if they both live they're executed on the spot, then the next two are pulled up. This would cascade into solving all issues in the world as a direct side effect of helping these evil megacorps to solve their supposed issues in the only way which will benefit Humanity as a whole.

      Congrats, you just re-invented Kengan Ashura

  • I've noticed .. the current iteration of commercial/educational Windows has nothing on the desktop you can run. Everything resides in the msCloud.
  • AWS is calling, they are demanding you start calling *them* the cloud monopoly again

  • Are they really so all up in the antitrust game playing that they want to throw stones at their neighbor to take heat of their own obvious monopoly abuses?

Keep up the good work! But please don't ask me to help.

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